GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KKCO)--You could call Aaron Young the accidental business man. While living in South Africa he bought a GPS to help him get around town, unfortunately it didn’t really work. "So my GPS was essentially like a blank screen," says Young, referring to the lack of maps for his location. Apparently nobody had bothered to map the country. So in his spare time young made a couple maps of Mt. Kilimanjaro and Cape Town, listing them for free on his website. Young says, "Lots and lots of people were grabbing them off my website and I was thinking, 'Wow, there must be some sort of interest.'"

So Young started mapping different foreign countries and selling the GPS maps online. He was now solving the same problem he had in South Africa, for other people. Young says people would write and tell him, "We got this GPS but we didn't have any use for it and then you guys came along."

To make sure each map is accurate and to highlight points of interest, Young and several of his employees actually drive through each country. Part time employee Tristan Nelson takes many of those trips. "You see a restaurant say, 'Hey, we gotta make sure that restaurant is in the map,’" he says. The team has racked up quite a few miles in the process. "Nine-hundred to 1,000 miles on this last trip in Costa Rica," says Nelson. They’ve also been fortunate to catch a few waves as well. "It was a lot of fun just exploring Nicaragua but then to be able to do that for work is just a bonus," says Young laughing.

But in early 2010, when Haiti suffered a huge earthquake Young found out his maps were more than just travel tools. Rushing to finish mapping as much of Haiti as they could, GPS Travel Maps donate their work to many relief groups, including the US Military, British Military and the International Red Cross. Young says, "In a small way here in Grand Junction we could help the people in Haiti."

GPS Travel Maps also has several iphone apps.