Guiding in Southern Italy

Published November 3, 2016 | By admin

Over the past 2 months I’ve been in central and southern Italy working for Butterfield & Robinson as a tour guide. It’s my 3rd year working for the company and this year I guided 4 trips in Puglia. If you don’t know where Puglia is, it’s the southern most “heal” of Italy. Guiding is a good break from training and racing where I can make some money to support myself and do something different. In the trips we did all kinds of activities with the travelers. Since 2 were private trips it was especially different. For the family we had gokarting, archery, a scavenger hunt, and a magician. In the last trip I guided, that was also private, I had the extra budget and organized to have a private boat on the second day. This was a huge highlight of the trip and loved the opportunity to do something unique.

After guiding finished I went back to Northern Italy for about 10 days and then at the end of October flew back to New Mexico. I’m excited to be back and back to training. Especially with a new mountain bike that I bought and can get on some trails in Santa Fe. November will be time to get back in shape and into training for 2017.

If you’re curious …. A day in the life of a guide:

The Trip: The B&R trips are 5 nights usually. So pickup on the first morning the travelers go by private bus/car to the bike storage where bikes await. Nights 1&2 are usually at 1 hotel (for Puglia this year it was south near Otranto), then Night 3 is just 1 night in a more “city” hotel (for Puglia it was in Lecce), then nights 4&5 are in another hotel (for Puglia it was north of Lecce and Ostuni, just outside a town called Savelletri).

The Day: Every morning I wake up about 6am to either get in a run/bike ride, or to get stuff ready for the day. Then we get the bikes ready and a table with snacks for the travelers. The travelers leisurely wake up around 8 and have breakfast, they meet at the bikes around 9. They head out on the route with one guide on the bike and one in the van as support. The ride to the lunch spot usually involves a coffee shop stop or van stop along the way. Since you can never have enough coffee or snacks. Lunch isn’t just a light little snack or sandwich, but has the full meal complete with wine. After lunch there is another section of riding to get to the destination of our previous or next hotel. There is usually a long option for anyone that wants to go ride more. Travelers usually arrive at the hotel about 4, or 5 if they did longer. Then everyone meets about 6:45 for a drink and 7:30 for dinner (if we can manage to get the restaurant to cook that early for our Americans). The dinner usually runs super long, even with a quick service, and finishes about 10. Then the last to leave at about 11. Then travelers go to their rooms and we guides head back to our rooms or hotel (if we are out of the trip hotel). But for me, the day doesn’t stop there. I usually work another 2 hrs on minor accounting to keep track of spending, and then work on video editing which I show the final night. So my night ends between 12 and 2 every night. I cram in a few hours of sleep and then rise and shine again for another day of running this fun and exciting trip.

The Guide:
We have a few days prior to the trip(s) to prepare and see the routes, hotels, and restaurants for the trip. Like a dry run, its called a pretrip. Then on trip everything is already organized, confirmed and run through. While on trip I feel like personal time is pretty non existent. I am constantly working, running, or thinking of whats coming next to plan on the trip. It’s partially the nature of the job, but also partially how I am as a perfectionist and giving more than 100%. Our days are busy and a big puzzle of problem solving that keeps me on my toes. It is like no other job in the world and feel like I’m almost an adult with so much responsibility but also like a kid when I find myself having fun with travelers. As guides, we are cyclists, hikers, picnic makers, hosts, sommelier, historians, comedians, everything and in-between. B&R guides are superheros that manage to be at two places at once and behind the scene fairies to create the impossible and make miracles happen.