Emilio Scotto: Ten Years Around the World

One day in the early nineteen-sixties, nine year-old Emilio informed his mother he was leaving home, right then and there, to see the world. She smiled patiently and said to him to go to school, but from that day on, young Emilio sent his mind wandering the planet, through maps and Atlases, to observe strange civilizations and people, with the certainty that one day his journey of the mind would become reality.
As he grew up and the world changed around him, the constant turmoil of his native Argentina made him yearn for the freedom of travel and exhilaration of discovery. But Emilio, like most of his countrymen, was contained by tile borders of his own country, bound by the gravity of poverty.
In late 1984, 30 years old Emilio Scotto saw his future and that bleak terror spurred him to find the courage to answer his calling. Against all advice, he quit his job, sold his belongings and set out with three hundred dollars to see the world. He had no sponsors, neither experience. He had never been anywhere. But he had faith that this seemingly reckless move would someday transform the Emilio Scotto that he was into the Emilio Scotto he wanted to be. He was to change his future, but what he did not bargain for was how profound that change would be.
If you believe in reincarnation of past lives, then Emilio Scotto is Christopher Columbus. Or Marco Polo. Or Ferdinand Magellan.
And in the tradition of the great explorers, Emilio Scotto embarked on a journey that had never been made, only in his case, he set forth around a seemingly explored, seemingly known world. What he found was quite the contrary. His adventure was as frightening and as dangerous as any acomplished by those men of legend. His travel give him one of the most studied and accurate understandings of the nature of who and what mankind is at this time in history. Not satisfied with merely passing through a land, Emilio became one of those people he visited, literally living with mercenaries. Whether they were nomads, pygmies, soldiers, murderers, gold searchers, political refugees, revolutionaries, priests or a hundred others, he has lived with them all. Born as a Christian he manage to change some words with the Pope, became Jew in the land of Moses, and Muslim in the land of Muhammad. He also learned five languages and some dialects. But most importantly, he came to know, to love, and sometimes hate, the Earth's people for their actions, not for the race they belong, their political ideas or their religious believes.
He has survived war and desolation, witnessed public executions and human sacrifice, tasted poverty, misery and man's darkest spirits. He has been beaten, shot at, arrested, imprisoned, tortured and has survived by drinking rainwater from his clothing and eating insects and animals most would fear even to touch.
But he has also seen breathtaking beauty, experienced incredible cultures and peoples, had many, many romantic interludes with women all over the globe, and the most radiant hearts that mankind offers.
Yet with so many women of the world at his disposal, Emilio missed one above all, his ex-girlfriend: Monica.
After six years of separation, so many miles and adventures and other women, Emilio could not live without Monica, so he call her. She joined him, and became his wife in India.
But Emilio has a compromise with a child dream, and take him another five years to complete his task of Homeric characteristics, including a consecutive second journey around the world.
In some parts she joined him, and they traveled together using Emilio's motorcycle, as their home. Living amazing situations, some as dangerous as others wonderful and inspiring, Emilio start then to see the world through the eyes of Monica . Even the long neck women, in the jungles of Burma, do it something no one ever see: they sat with Monica under a tree and gave her to handle a new born child.
Emilio Scotto is alone in his perspective of the world, having lived in every country on the planet and touched the people of each of those places. He has a world view, at the end of the twentieth century, that is both heartening and despairing. Argentinean by birth, his journey has made him a citizen of the world; a sojourner.
Someday, Emilio Scotto will walk on the moon, as did one of his heroes, Neil Armstrong. For the average man such a declaration might seem to border on lunacy, but for Emilio Scotto, a self-described simple man, he is, by his actions, a man of unqualified ambitions and unwavering resolve. As you get to know him you will realize he is not a man who makes claims he cannot fulfill. You will come away with the unshakable conviction that for any one of us, all things are possible.