Ewan McGregor recounts challenges of South America motorcycle trip
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- Movie star Ewan McGregor has combined his real-life passion for motorcycles with his Hollywood recognition in three TV series. The third series about his motorcycle trips, Long Way Up, presented the greatest challenges.
In Long Way Round and Long Way Down, McGregor and his friend, Charley Boorman, rode motorcycles through Kazakhstan, Siberia, Mongolia, Alaska, Africa and other remote places. Long Way Up takes them on the Pan-American Highway and through South America, beginning in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in Argentina that is nicknamed "the end of the world."
"When we crossed into Bolivia, the border crossing leads you into complete wilderness," McGregor said in a Zoom roundtable. "It's really high altitude, and the roads get really bad."
Movie fans know McGregor as Obi Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy or Renton in Trainspotting. Star Wars fans threatened to interrupt his Long Way Up trip. In Guayaquil, Ecuador, a Star Wars social media account told fans that McGregor was in town.
"Some people were arriving, going, 'Obi, we didn't know where you'd be,'" McGregor said, referring to his character from the films.
Once the fans found McGregor and Boorman having a meal, police were needed to help clear a path for them to exist.
"We were just holed up in this restaurant, a crowd outside the door, thinking, 'How are we going to get out?" McGregor said. "[Fans were] always very friendly. It was never a chore."
Riding north in South America, McGregor was taken by varieties of fashion. He noted that the women of each country wore a different shaped hat, as well as different combinations of pleated skirts and cardigans.
One common thread that connected every culture in South America was their language, McGregor said.
"Whereas before, going through the African continent, every country was different from the last [and] had different languages," McGregor said. "This trip, it was predominantly Spanish."
McGregor and Boorman voluntarily added another new challenge to Long Way Up. They decided to ride electric motorcycles. Since Long Way Down in 2007, McGregor had been keeping up with developments in electric vehicles. McGregor said automobiles got a head start on developing electric power.
"It's only now, in the motorcycle world, electric bikes are beginning to make an impact," McGregor said.
Harley-Davidson Inc. gave Long Way Up LiveWire prototypes for the trip. LiveWires went on the market since Long Way Up wrapped production, but the show presents McGregor and Boorman as some of the bikes' first riders.
To prepare, "We'd only ridden the actual bikes for half an hour in a parking lot in Milwaukee," McGregor said. "The first couple or three weeks of the trip was our learning curve."
Finding outlets to charge the LiveWires added a complication they never had to address while riding internal combustion motorcycles. Cold weather hindered the batteries' ability to charge, and Boorman recalled struggling to recharge the bikes in Argentina because of the cold.
"It was too cold to charge outside, so we had to bring the bikes in," Boorman said. "Then we had to get blankets to put over the bikes to try and warm them up so we could get a charge."
Boorman said the need to charge the LiveWires led to encounters with locals. The supporting cast of Long Way Up was largely determined by who had outlets for their bikes. Some even allowed McGregor and Boorman to run cables out their windows.
"People were so happy to oblige," Boorman said. "If we hadn't had to plug in, we wouldn't have had those experiences."
With electric motorcycles, McGregor and Boorman had more flexibility to record dialogue. They no longer had to wait until they parked to converse because noisy engines overpowered their dialogue.
"Ewan and I could be riding along together and we could talk to each other," Boorman said.
Since no loud engines scared away the wildlife, Long Way Up also featured more animal encounters.
"You pull up beside these llamas," Boorman said. "Because there was no engine noise, they would just sort of stand around and look at you because [we] didn't become a threat."
Long Way Up premieres Friday on Apple TV+.