Some forty-five years later a far-flung, thrill-seeking journalist decided to retrace Guevara's route and to investigate Che's legacy. Like Guevara, Patrick Symmes crisscrossed South America by motorcycle (his a BMW R80 G/S, Guevara's a 1939 Norton). In his search for people who might remember Guevara, Symmes finds himself in a number of compromising situations: He runs out of gas in a desolate Argentinean desert, talks a guerrilla out of taking him hostage in Peru, crashes his motorcycle in Chile, and drinks himself blind with Che's motorcycling partner, Alberto Granado, in Cuba. Despite his troubles, he manages to talk to Latin Americans from all walks of life about Che's legend. He meets an ex-girlfriend of Ernesto's as well as a few politicians and poet-revolutionaries who claim to have fought side by side with Che in Cuba and Bolivia. He meets lepers Guevara the medical student treated and farmers and innkeepers who gave him a place to sleep during his nights on the road. But to his dismay, he also discovers young adults everywhere who know more about American rap music than they do about the iconic figure mythologized by the world.

A perfectly pitched and immensely informative book, "Chasing Che" transfixes us with the glory of the open road, where man and machinetraverse the unknown in search of the spirit's keenest desires.