Travelling with Che Guevara - The Making of a Revolutionary

Published for the first time in the U.S. - one of the two diaries on which the movie The Motorcycle Diaries is based - the moving and at times hilarious account of Che Guevara and Alberto Granado's eight-month tour of South America in 1952. In 1952 Alberto Granado, a young doctor, and his friend Ernesto Guevara, a 23-year-old medical student from a distinguished Buenos Aires family, decided to explore their continent. They set off from Cordoba in Argentina on a Norton 500cc motorbike and traveled through Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. The duo's adventures vary from the suspenseful (stowing away on a cargo ship, exploring Incan ruins) to the comedic (falling in love, drinking, fighting...) to the serious (volunteering as firemen and at a leper colony). They worked as day laborers along the way - as soccer coaches, medical assistants, and furniture movers. The poverty and exploitation of the native population started the process that was to turn Ernesto - the debonair, fun-loving student - into Che, the revolutionary who had a profound impact on the history of several nations....