Slow Orbit : Motorcyclist Prepares for 2nd Trip Around the World

You’d think Emilio Scotto would have gotten his fill of picking bugs out of his teeth the first time around.

After spending 7 1/2 years riding his motorcycle around the world, however, the Argentine adventurer is ready to give it another whirl.

Scotto came full cycle on his first globe-hopping ride the other day when he rolled into Los Angeles for a breather. Next week, he plans to start his second trip, which he expects to finish in 1995.

The reason? Although he filled seven 54-page passports, used up “10,000 gallons of petrol” and changed 59 worn-out tires, Scotto was disappointed to see that he missed 43 countries.

“I traveled through 142 countries, but I want to reach them all,” Scotto shrugged as he traced his fingers over a map showing the west-to-east route he took on his Honda 1100 Gold Wing motorcycle. ‘It seems like new countries are forming all the time.”

Scotto, 37, is stretching his legs this week at the Downey home of a family he met when he rode into Los Angeles in early 1986 as he started his 285,000-mile odyssey.

Argentine-born architectural designer Gustavo Cesareo and his wife, Liliam, befriended Scotto that year when they noticed the motorcycle’s Argentina license plate. They gave him a place to stay and found him a short-term construction job that helped him bankroll the first leg of his trip across the United States.

Later, Scotto financed his part of the trip’s $250,000 cost by writing magazine articles about the journey and wrangling sponsorships from companies such as Pepsi-Cola.

For the last few years, readers of nine European magazines have followed Scotto’s exploits. They have included visits with Pope John Paul II and Moammar Kadafi (the Libyan gave him $500), his marriage in India to his longtime Argentine sweetheart, rides through climates ranging from 130 degrees to minus-29 degrees and arrests for spying in three Third World countries.

“My mother back home in Buenos Aires still cries for me,” Scotto said. “But she’s happy for me because I’m happy.”

Scotto was a medical supply salesman when he bought his 1980 motorcycle and got the urge to hit the road. After preparing “peace letters” he hoped to personally deliver to world leaders, he strapped as many possessions as he could fit on the cycle and headed out.

He was barely under way in 1985 when thieves in Brazil stripped his parked motorcycle. Since then he has traveled light, toting only his camera, plenty of film and a few changes of clothing.

Good thing, too. Scotto dodged bullets fired by Sandinistas in Nicaragua who couldn’t believe a tourist would be traveling through the battle zone. In Liberia, he hid in a foreign embassy for a week after getting caught in the cross-fire of a coup. He passed through Kuwait shortly before Iraq invaded; one of his hosts, in fact, was killed by the occupying army.

Scotto was jailed four times in Africa. Officials in Chad, Burundi and Cameroon suspected that he was a spy because he was taking snapshots and had previously traveled in enemy countries. Each time, he was let go after a day or so in custody, he said, when cooler heads prevailed.

But Scotto said he was arrested in Zimbabwe because border agents were confused by his passport.

“They didn’t believe it was real because it is written in Spanish,” he said. “They said that all passports had to be in English. They finally released me after I signed a document promising to make the president of Argentina put it in English.”

Remarkably, Scotto said, he crashed his motorcycle only once on his trip. That happened at night at an unlighted “round-about” intersection in Tanzania. He was hospitalized for a week.

The engine on his decal-covered Honda, which Scotto fondly calls his “Black Princess,” was replaced after 220,000 miles as a precaution before crossing the Sahara.

He put the motorcycle on an airliner for the last leg across the Pacific earlier this month. Back in the United States, the motorcycle’s Argentine plates helped reunite Scotto with the Cesareos on his return to Los Angeles.

The family had moved from South Gate to Downey and when Scotto arrived from the South Pacific he was unable to locate them.

But once again an Argentine-born stranger saw the motorcycle’s plates as Scotto rode down the street. The man flagged him down on Firestone Boulevard, struck up a conversation and spent the rest of the day helping Scotto navigate through Southland telephone books to find the family’s new address.

The cycle was complete.