RIDING THE REVOLUTION
“It seems like I’m the only member of the family who has inherited my father’s love of motorcycles and that passion helps me connect with him”
In truth, this story begins in January 1952 when two 20-something adventurers climbed aboard a spluttering 1939 Norton 500cc motorbike, dubbed La Poderosa (“The Mighty One”), and set out from Buenos Aires on a grand adventure across South America.
That “grand adventure” evolved into the seminal book and film, The Motorcycle Diaries, which quickly rose to cult status and set in train a series of momentous events that preceded my arrival in Havana.
The man at the centre of these events was none other than Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Argentinean Marxist revolutionary and posthumous pop art icon who, along with Fidel Castro, yanked Cuba from the yoke of its corrupt capitalist masters and installed one of the most durable regimes of modern times.
As a mere crumb on the breakfast table of history, my own adventure was nowhere near as grand, but still tantalising nonetheless in the knowledge that all these
