He planned the trip spontaneously

Most people, when planning a trip of this magnitude would not simply wake up one morning and say “I think I will travel 8,000 on a crappy old motorcycle”. I say most people because this was exactly the thought process that Che and his buddy Alberto went through when planning the trip. According to Che himself, this is how the conversation went:

“Why don’t we go to North America?”
“North America? But how?”
“On La Poderosa*, man.”

Perhaps this is why Che is such an alluring figure, everybody dreams about having the freedom like that to just give up everything and try something new. To just wake up one morning and travel halfway across the world not caring about breaking down in the middle of nowhere or being killed by Columbian drug cartels.

*(La Poderosa was the name of their motorcycle)

He was really bad at planning

For somebody who was instrumental in bringing down governments, Che was surprisingly bad at planning for simple tasks. While Che’s spontaneous decision to travel to North America may have seemed a romantic idea to him at the time, it is clear though reading The Motorcycle Diaries that a little bit of planning wouldn’t have gone astray. According to Che, their priorities were as follows:

“My most important mission before leaving was to take exams in as many subjects as possible; Alberto’s to prepare the bike for the long journey, and to study and plan our route”.

Upon reading, it was clear that Che and