I was recently asked by a friend’s son for help on his business class assignment. It was a pretty standard assignment for a high school class: ask a successful businessperson what it takes to start their own company. I was, of course, flattered since no businessperson ever sees themselves as totally “successful.” Hopeful, maybe. Unfoundedly optimistic, perhaps. Maybe even wildly delusional. But I took it as a compliment nonetheless and started to answer the questions. It was about 10 simple questions, which could have been answered with a couple of sentences each, but SaharaTrek isn’t about half measures or shortcuts. Also, I love to talk about myself. So 20 possible sentences became a manifesto on building a business out of sand, camel poo, and hope. So I’d like to share some of that (did I mention I love to talk about myself?)
- How/why did you decide to sell this product/service?
Picture this: 1999. Florida’s political winds had shifted, and suddenly I found myself unemployed with a severance check and an itch that couldn’t be scratched by staying put. Some men buy boats. Some men buy motorcycles. I shipped a Jeep Wrangler to Europe.
For months, I wandered—no plan, no deadline, just me and 3,000 pounds of American steel on cobblestone streets that had seen Napoleon’s armies, often by accident because I had no clue what a round blue sign with a red line through some kind of emoji meant. Until one afternoon, standing at the edge of Gibraltar, staring across that narrow strip of churning blue water. Africa. Right there. Close enough to see the mountains rising from the coast.
The question wasn’t “why?”
The question was “why the hell not?”
Three days became thirty.
Morocco in 1999 wasn’t the Morocco of Instagram and boutique riads. This was still a country where roads were suggestions, infrastructure was a rumor, and my Jeep—finally, gloriously—was exactly what it was built for. I followed the road south like following a siren’s call. Over the High Atlas Mountains, where switchbacks cling to cliffs. Down through the Draa Valley, where time moves differently. Until I reached M’hamid—the last outpost before 3,000 miles of nothing but sand.
The guidebook said the Hotel Sahara was “the better option,” which in travel-guide speak meant “less likely to kill you.” I rolled into the main square searching for it—no GPS, just instinct and broken Arabic—when suddenly I was surrounded. Faux guides in flowing djellabas materialized from doorways like genies from bottles, all shouting, all grabbing, all demanding I buy their camel trek, their “authentic experience,” and their cousin’s carpet.
I’d had enough.
I dropped the clutch and started cutting donuts in the gravel square—a mechanical rodeo that sent so-called guides diving for cover while locals watched from windows, either horrified or entertained. One unfortunate soul I pinned between my bumper and a wall. To his credit, he pointed very enthusiastically toward the hotel I was looking for.
In a move that would make the Dukes of Hazzard proud (and the auto insurance company pass out), I dropped gears and sent the Jeep into a sideways sliding stop in a cloud of dust. Out walked Habib, the owner, laughing so hard he could barely stand.
His English was broken. My Arabic wasn’t much better. Somehow, we understood each other perfectly.
One night in the Sahara turned into two days in M’hamid. Two days became ten. Late nights under stars that hung so low you could touch them. Late starts because why rush paradise? Every sunset brought another party, every sunrise another adventure. I was living in a beautiful, disorienting loop—my own Moroccan Groundhog Day.
Then came the walk through the Kasbah.
I’d invited the British doctor—one of only three other Westerners in the hotel—to join an afternoon stroll. Habib would drop us at one end of the palm grove, we’d walk thirty minutes through the maze of mud-brick passages, and meet him on the other side. Simple.
Except we moved faster than Habib expected. Thirty minutes became ninety. Summer heat. No water. Because who brings water for a thirty-minute walk?
We emerged at the village well—no running water in this place that had just gotten electricity the week before—and the doctor announced with British understatement: “It appears we have a choice. We can die of dehydration or cholera.”
Habib appeared moments later. I was mortified. I’d nearly killed this man.
That night, the Irish couple staying at the hotel approached me.
“The doctor can’t stop talking about today,” they said. “Could you arrange something like that for us?”
That’s when it hit me. The Eureka moment that changes everything.
Everyone wanted adventure—real adventure, not the sanitized bus tours run by American-hating French operators or the reckless solo trips where you’re one wrong turn from disaster. They wanted someone who’d already made the mistakes, learned the language of chaos, knew which walls to trust, and which guides could outrun a Jeep.
They wanted what I’d stumbled into: Morocco unfiltered, raw, alive.
And just like that, in a dusty hotel at the edge of the Sahara, after a near-death march through a Kasbah and too many nights sleeping under stars—SaharaTrek was born.
Not from a business plan. From a wrong turn that turned out to be exactly right.
