I’d always known Che Guevara for his politics, tied to his role in Fidel Castro’s Cuban rebel forces. His full name was Ernesto Guevara de la Serna. “Che” was an Argentine slang term—like “hey” or “buddy”—that Cubans adopted as his nickname during the revolution.
It wasn’t until much later that I learned of The Motorcycle Diaries, first published in 1993. It’s a book based on Guevara’s notes about his 1952 motorcycle adventure with his friend Alberto Granado. Granado owned a 1939 Norton with a 500cc long-stroke powerplant bearing the name La Poderosa II (aka The Mighty One), which the pair rode on the trip. Eventually, my curiosity was piqued. What kind of motorcycle touring story a guy like Guevara would tell?
It turns out the motorcycle trip wasn’t the first two-wheel long-distance tour for Guevara. In 1950, Guevara had ridden a motorized bicycle 2800 miles around northern Argentina.
The book, The Motorcycle Diaries – Notes on a Latin American Journey, does not focus on politics, even though the experience did play a role in shaping Guevara’s later life. Given what I had understood about Guevara’s later years, I was surprised at the easy-going, humorous motorcycle adventure story he created in his notes that became the book.
When Guevara and Granado left for Buenos Aires aboard the Norton thumper in December 1951, Guevara had just completed part of his medical school training and wanted to wrap up his exams before departure. Granado had a university education as a biochemist specializing in leprology.
Though there were probably many reasons for the motorcycle trip the duo embarked on, the simplest reason was a spur-of-the-moment decision to go to North America. There is no detailed explanation of why that was the objective; it just was.
At that point, their planning began, such as it was, for what we would today call an adventure motorcycle tour. Of course, the preparation was pretty basic, and it presaged a trip that would have more than its share of problems. On the other hand, both riders were in their 20s, and problems can make a long-range motorcycle tour into what some call “an adventure.”
By Guevara’s description, among the first things attended to was documentation—visas, certificates, and the like. Guevara’s attention was turned to completing exams, so it fell to Granado to plan their route and prepare the Norton for the journey.
Guevara clearly understood the potential for inadequate preparation:
The enormity of our endeavor escaped us in those moments; all we could see was the dust on the road ahead and ourselves on the bike, devouring kilometers in our flight northward.
On January 4, 1952, the men departed Buenos Aires, heading south to Villa Gesell—the first 750 miles of the trip. To add some drama, they brought Comeback—a small dog they took to Guevara’s girlfriend, Chichina. By itself, that would have been no big deal, but for the dog’s chronic diarrhea and some tumbles Comeback took off the back of the bike.
Guevara noted the load on the rack at the back of the bike affected the Norton’s handling:
The motorbike is very hard to control, with extra weight on the rack behind the center of gravity tending to lift the front wheel, and the slightest lapse in concentration sends us flying.
The handling problems continued when Guevara and Granado reached the sand dunes near Medanos. With Granado at the helm, the sand put them down six times. After they left the dunes and Guevara took his turn at the controls, things got worse.
A crash on a sand-covered corner pinned Guevara’s foot under the Norton, where it was scorched by the engine, causing a burn that would not heal. In all, they had nine crashes that day, including two in the midst of a downpour.
By the next day, Guevara was down with the flu and ended up in a hospital. Given Guevara’s asthma, that could have been the end of the road in more ways than one.
The Norton was also having problems by that time. It began emitting a strange noise, which turned out to be caused by a broken front frame downtube. Granado performed a temporary fix using wire, which got them to a town where the frame was welded.
The next day, after yet another fall on a gravel road, the Norton’s rear tire went flat, and the kickstarter was damaged.
Often scrounging for food and sleeping next to the bike on the ground or in sheds and barns, Guevara and Granado depended on the kindness of strangers, which they usually received. By February 11, they reached Chile aboard the ferry boat Modesta Victoria.
The adventures in their transit of Chile ranged from repeated mechanical problems, bad weather, and tire punctures to being featured as front-page news by a local newspaper. It was also the end of the road for La Poderosa.
A few miles outside the village of Lautaro, with the gearbox flagging and the brakes having failed on a long downhill section of road, cattle on the road caused still another crash. They got the bike, and themselves, trucked to Cullipulli. Guevara wrote, “La Poderosa finally gave up the ghost.”
The pair continued from there, with the disabled Norton left in Santiago. The journey traversed Peru and Colombia, eventually reaching Caracas, Venezuela. There, Granado and Guevara went their separate ways in July.
In the end, the journey changed Guevara. It influenced his politics, worldview, and future in ways he couldn’t have imagined. But, for those crazy, adventurous days in 1952, bouncing along with a buddy on a battered Norton motorcycle, he was just a 23-year-old medical student out to see the world.
The Motorcycle Diaries Fast Facts
- Full title: The Motorcycle Diaries – Notes on a Latin American Journey
- Author: Ernesto “Che” Guevara
- Introductions: Cintio Vitier and Walter Salles
- Foreword: Aleida Guevara
- Published: 2021. First edition, 1993; second edition, 2003.
- Format: Paperback, 181 pages, 25 black-and-white images
- Publisher: Seven Stories Press on behalf of Ocean Press, Melbourne
- ISBN: 978-1-64421-068-0 (paperback); 978-1-64421-069-7 (e-book)
- Price: $18, paperback
A motion picture based on The Motorcycle Diaries was released in 2004, directed by Walter Salles.
