Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a twenty-three-year-old Argentinian medical student, decides to take a break from his studies and travel around Latin America up to North America on his motorcycle “La Poderosa” (The Mighty One) with biochemist and friend Alberto Granado.
Saying goodbye to his girlfriend Chichina is difficult, but Guevara knows he is meant to wander and see the world. The first travel spots are in Argentina, where they meet friends, eat and drink well, and continue to make the precarious bike work for them. Guevara suffers a bout of flu but recovers.
After leaving Argentina, they make their way to Chile by boat. In Chile, they are local celebrities due to their work on leprosy; a newspaper article about them and their adventures secures them lodging and food many times while they are in Chile. Unfortunately, the bike crashes too many times and cannot be revived, so Guevara and Alberto enter the new phase of their journey as “bums without wheels.”
In Chile, they fight a fire with a fire brigade, explore the city streets of Valparaiso, play football, and try—without success—to get to Easter Island. Guevara attends to a poor sick woman and reflects on how she is like all suffering and dying poor people, and how the government ought to spend more money on socially useful things rather than touting their own power.
In order to avoid traveling in the desert, the men decide to sneak aboard a ship because they cannot afford to pay for passage. They manage to carry this off by hiding in the privy, which stinks so badly that they have to announce themselves to the captain. They are allowed to stay and work.
In their last weeks in Chile, they visit copper mines, lakes, arid stretches of brush, and the charming town of Arica. Guevara is impressed when he reflects on how Spanish explorers of the past carried out their conquests in places like this. He also compares Chile to Argentina, noting that the former is struggling much more than the latter.
Guevara and Alberto make it to Peru and start climbing the mountains in trucks they snag rides on. They meet Peruvians who tell them about the current state of the Peruvian poor as well as illume certain aspects of the past and certain rituals.
Cuzco is a high point for the men, and Guevara writes of how multifaceted the city is: as he sees it, there are three different Cuzcos that appeal to different people who visit it. Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu fascinate them, as well as the amalgamation of Indian and Spanish architecture, culture, and dress.
After a couple weeks, Guevara and Alberto move on to Lima, which is an arduous journey comprised of multiple switches of vehicles. Lima is pretty and somewhat modern, also wearing aspects of multiple cultures. The men explore museums, meet with other leprologists, and travel by boat to the leper colony of San Pablo, visit the Indians of the Yaguas tribe, and take a raft out of the colony to Colombia.
Guevara and Alberto separate after they get to Venezuela, which makes Guevara melancholy. He concludes his travel narrative by asserting his commitment to revolution, to fighting against United States imperialism, and to preparing himself for sacrifice in this great battle.
