Andrea Garreffa: interview with a cycle-traveler writer

Traveling by bike to discover Central America: who in their life has not dreamed at least once of setting off for such an undertaking? We have seized the opportunity and decided to have a chat with Andrea Garreffa who, in addition to being a highly experienced cycle-tourist, has also written a book in which he recounted some of his adventures. The first adjective with which Andrea described himself is curious: curious to discover what lies on the other side of the road from his house, but also to learn more about the world that hosts us. His first contact with the bicycle began when he was seven years old, but it wasn't the best: falls in the driveway of the garage where he had his first tests have never been forgotten. But it often happens that the most beautiful love stories are those that require time before they bloom and so it was:

The passion was born thanks to my brother who, when he was eighteen (and I was thirteen), set off on a cycling adventure with a friend. First in Sardinia, then in Corsica: a few years later I wanted to imitate him and with four friends, we cycled from Bologna to Florence. Heavy like mules, makeshift mountain bikes, and a desire to succeed. It took us two days. The passion then managed to take off thanks to meeting two guys with whom I used to play basketball in high school: Zeno and Tommaso. They were the ones who invited me to join a group of friends who already traveled by bike. Each trip was a real Tour, whose philosophy was summed up in the playful acronym BdCT (Bus from the Butt Tour). My first real bike trip was with them in the summer of 2007, from Bologna to Budapest. There were six of us and we were twenty years old. We traveled 1000 km in ten days.

Andrea Garreffa cycled through Guatemala along Ruta 5

In Andrea Garreffa's life, however, there is not only the bike, in fact, he loves to play basketball, read, take care of the garden and travel, even not by bike! Lately, he tries to choose his destinations in a way that allows him to practice windsurfing, a sport to which he is becoming very passionate. But the experience we wanted to hear about was his trip to Central America, from which his book "Ovidio. This book is a brick" was also born. Here are his words:

The idea came from my friend Alberto. While he was traveling somewhere in the world, he took a sheet of paper and wrote a short list: six routes he would have liked to travel by bike in his lifetime. One of these was precisely in Central America. At the end of the winter of 2015, we both found ourselves having the necessary time available. He proposed the thing to me and we immediately booked the flights, without thinking too much about it. We carefully designed the route, trying to document ourselves on the possible dangers we could run into, but we were guided by an incurable optimism. We were driven by the idea that, as in all our other bicycle trips, along the way we would find much more "good" than "bad". After all, we were convinced that the only real "bad" thing was the fear that, if listened to, would often have prevented us from leaving. This trip gave rise to the idea of the book which speaks, more specifically, about an encounter in Guatemala. The meeting then translated into a great excuse to help a Guatemalan farmer build his own house. That's why the book "is a brick". Writing is a passion that I have cultivated for a long time. In the past, I wrote for a magazine, then I decided to quit. I continued to write only for myself. The book constitutes my "return to the open" and writing it allowed me to respond to a profound need I felt, that of digesting the trip.

There were also some unforeseen events during the trip

The love for travel that merges with the need to write to better digest every detail: Andrea Garreffa has known how to listen to his desires, not letting himself be caged by fear. Who else could we ask for some advice on how to organize a bike trip? According to him, the first thing to do is to travel light! Reduce your baggage to the bone and make this translate into a life philosophy: in addition, you always need to take care of your bike. The best maintenance is its cleanliness. As long as it goes, it is important to be faithful to it: for Andrea it is better to avoid replacing it in an attempt to chase the latest technological gimmick. Practically, it is also advisable to always carry string, hardware, and electrician's clamps with you: a really useful kit. Finally, before saying goodbye, we asked him to reveal the trips he keeps in his dream drawer:

I would like to pedal in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. I would like to cycle in Sri Lanka. I would like to ride on the Caretera Austral in Patagonia. But before leaving, I would always like the question to burn within me: "what does traveling mean to me?". If the answer, even if only for a moment, were trivially "moving", I will have the great pleasure of always staying at home.

A photo of Ovidio's family, the Guatemalan farmer who inspired Andrea Garreffa in writing the book

Article by Travel On Art