There are two scenes that were improvised during the filming process.
The scene when Ernesto and Alberto are riding in the snow was not in the screen play. When the crew arrived to the filming location they faced with extraordinary weather conditions. However it was their day off they decided to go to the mountains and shoot this scene.
The scene in Cusco was filmed because the little "tour guide" boy asked the film crew if he can show them the city. They said yes and brought the camera as well. This is the way how they found the women with whom Ernesto and Alberto is talking in the Cusco scene.
The scene when Ernesto and Alberto are riding in the snow was not in the screen play. When the crew arrived to the filming location they faced with extraordinary weather conditions. However it was their day off they decided to go to the mountains and shoot this scene.
The scene in Cusco was filmed because the little "tour guide" boy asked the film crew if he can show them the city. They said yes and brought the camera as well. This is the way how they found the women with whom Ernesto and Alberto is talking in the Cusco scene.
When Ernesto and Alberto are in Temuco, walking with the bike and reading "El Diario Austral," Alberto complains because they misspelled his last name. El Diario Austral still exists, and it's the biggest newspaper in the Araucanía region of southern Chile. During filming in Temuco, the newspaper wrote a new article about the making of the film, and deliberately misspelled Alberto's last name again, 50 years later.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara's diaries were only discovered years after he'd died, in a knapsack, and were published in Cuba in 1993.
When Ernesto and Alberto are at the Chuquicamata copper mine, the foreman shouts that the mine "isn't a tourist attraction." These days, it is.
"Al otro lado del río", by Uruguayan composer Jorge Drexler became the second song in a language other than English to win an Oscar. (The first was "Ta paidia toy Peiraia" (Children of Piraeus) by Greek composer Manos Hatzidakis from the film Nunca aos Domingos (1960)). Producers asked Drexler, who wrote and recorded the song for the film, not to perform it during the Oscar ceremony, citing "commercial reasons" (he's not famous). Antonio Banderas and Carlos Santana performed the song instead. When Drexler went to the podium to accept his Oscar, he sang about 30 seconds of the song a capella, instead of giving a speech. (NOTE: Antonio Banderas played Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Evita (1996).)