King David and Finding Che

The phone rings and I answer it. "What the hell are you doing in Buenos Aires?" I have no idea who is on the other end until the stern but friendly voice identifies himself as Dan, an old publisher friend from way back. "You want to have lunch with me in half an hour? I'm at the Faena Hotel," he asks. Almost broke and with plenty of time on my hands I oblidge.

The next 48 hours are a total blur... talks of wine, women and war, fireworks, Olsen, business plans on napkins, Tango and rental car mafia/wedding planners giving us the skinny on what's naught in BA. And then we hit the road.

We arrived at Che's house in Alta Gracia, a quiet suburban neighborhood thirty minutes outside of Cordoba at six o'clock in the morning after driving all night in a torrentialt rainstorm - dangerous driving, the kind of driving that takes people out. There's his motorized bicycle that he circumnavigated Argentina on, the last letter he wrote to his parents shortly before he was killed in Bolivia and some random neighborhood photos portraying him as an average upper-middle class citizen. But Che was an idealist with a big ego. Che's victory in Cuba was relatively easy and then he proceeded to loose all of his other revolutionary attempts. A sufferer of his own dogma, he was unable to see beyond the reality of his political ideas and waged a one-man war against everyone who was not on his side.

Checking into the King David hotel in Cordoba capital some 30 hours after we started our journey, I could not keep my eyes open any longer. Che would have slept in the bush outside of the capital, today we have capital and no need for BUSH - BASTA... y `Hasta la victoria siempre!'