The making of a revolutionary
Recreating the Motorcycle Diaries without the moto
This story is about making a jump.
Leaving routine, order and professional goals behind and leaping for something different.
I value the afformentioned featues of normal life very highly. They form the bedrock of a happy and comfortable existence. At the same time, there is more to See, more to Hear, more to Engage with. The world is full of beauty, diversity, and ways of living that challenge my preconceptions.
For me, a life without extended breaks from work is one which is missing something. Whether that be the opportunity to explore a distant land, to build relationships with a new community, or simply to embrace the rejuvenative and radical power of not working.
I love my job as a history and politics teacher. I love the relationships that you build with students and staff. I love the sense that you are working together to maximse the real potential of powerful people who will change the world.
But I also know that the best version of myself is the one that approaches challenges refreshed and ready to give everything. After 5 and a half years of working in British schools, I’m ready to take a new leap.
As a teenager I watched Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) and dreamed of travelling the South American continent much the same way that young doctors Che Guevara and Alberto Granado did on La Poderosa in 1952.
I worked hard to develop my Spanish speaking skills at university, and benefitted from volunteering as a Translator in a group of 20 young Brits working in El Salvador for 3 months in 2015. At this time Latinoamérica by Calle 13 became a song I idolysed and learned off by heart by printing the lyric sheet, scribbling translations all over it and then playing it, repeatedly, until the verses stuck. The fascination grew deeper.
Che was 23 when he made the journey by motorbike, a youthful idealist, looping the South American cone from Buenos Aires down to Patagonia and up through Chile, Perú, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. He wasn’t very dictatorial at that point, just a young traveller, making note of the poverty and disadvantage that isolated normal people across this vast land mass.
At 22 I travelled to Perú to work in an international school in Cajamarca, hoping that in 2017 I may attempt a similar voyage of my own. But Perú was so engaging and it’s people and cultures so diverse that I spent virtually my entire time abroad within its boundaries.
Teach First called, and I returned to England with a renewed desire to work hard and to traverse the less known corners of my own country. I worked for five years in the same school in Northampton making hundreds of human connections the way teachers do, and developing my resilience through endurance sports. I didn’t take a plane after 2019 and ran and cycled across the home nations incessantly.
But now is the time for the next leap. With Jake, a friend of several years by my side, I’ve returned to Latin America. This time I’m 29, the age of Alberto Granado, not Che, but still with the same desire to learn and live.
In the face of the climate crisis, the world needs to change. And I hope this journey will help me to identify my own small role in instigating that change.
Despite the ambition and sheer length of this project, as Lagrimas de Sangre have so elocuently outlined, I will always have a place to return.
So, here we go fulfilling the ride of a lifetime across a continent.
We follow the Andes mountain chain from the depths of Patagonia in the south to the Caribbean tip of South America in the north.
From a crisp, autumnal Chile Chico near the Argentinian border, to a sweltering sandy beach in Cartagena, Colombia. With Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador in between.
A journey of some 10,000km, endless history, hundreds of mountain passes and a whole ton of joy.
If you like the writing, I’d love it if you could share it with someone else you think might enjoy it.
¡VAMOSSSSSS!
Next post: Día 1 Spitting off the Edge of the World
