In 1998, recent UM graduate, Brian Morgan, visited Ecuador in search of sublime beaches; it was supposed to be one short, final untamed excursion before he settled down and plugged into the working world. When he departed for South America, he couldn’t even speak a word of Spanish.
Morgan, a Havre native, stayed for an entire year, living and working in Ecuador and Peru, before deciding to return to Missoula. Using a list of contacts from his time abroad, he decided to attempt to fill the void he saw in the Latin American tourism market. He bought a laptop and posted itineraries in local shops advertising tours of certain areas he was familiar with. In February 1999, with a little bit of money, Morgan launched a crude website and convinced a friend to place him at the very top of Google’s adventure travel category, which resulted in immediate traffic.
Eleven years later and Morgan, 38, is running his own company: Adventure Life Journeys. With its strong devotion to low-impact and nature-based tourism, Adventure Life continues to bring a fresh, unconventional, environmentally-sensitive approach to traveling. There’s a colossal difference between seeing the Americas and experiencing the Americas, says Morgan.
