In 1953, the 25 year old Che Guevara embarked on a journey along the spine of the Andes to Mexico that is retraced by many travellers today. He wanted to explore his continent and its cultural heritage, to understand what it meant to be Latin American. It was an experience which, culminating as it did in his first meeting with Fidel Castro, was to affect his political thinking radically. His diaries and letters home reveal not only a traveller who was brilliantly alert to all her saw around him, but also the revolutionary in the making.