Sandra and Miguel invited me to ride along in their car to Merzouga (an 8 hour drive, East to the Sahara). About 6 hours in the middle of the desert (everywhere is the middle of the desert), we got a flat tire. Miguel skillfully NASCAR’d us out of a Moroccan rollover, steered through it and safely got us off to the sandy roadside… We opened the trunk to discover that the rental company left out the most important piece of the jack, we were jackless and had no way to change the tire. The sun was going down fast and it was starting to get dark.

After about 20 minutes of fiddling and trying to invent new solutions, I decided to start waving and flagging any passing vehicles. Our angels were right on it, and on the very first try, someone pulled over. He spoke only Arabic and Spanish – which, of course, was no problem for Sandra and Miguel’s boatload of language surplus.

The kind stranger had a jack and we had the tire changed in no time… well, Miguel had the tire changed in no time!

A couple hours more and we met up with the rest of our A-team at the Sahara base camp… recounting and reliving our brave, desert adventure… peppering our Tajine dinner into the middle of the night… entertained by an impromptu drum jam session by the Berber brothers and family who would be hosting the next day’s trek…