The fun, friendly, and frugal way to travel within (and outside) Mexico

Do radical consciousness comfy successful your home? Do you similar to big out-of-town visitors? Enjoy staying overnight successful your friends’ homes? 

Long earlier I knew astir location exchanges, I utilized to similar staying successful a friend’s home, with oregon without them. When I was with them, they were bully company; alone, I felt a sneaky benignant of freedom, arsenic if I had been fixed support to beryllium an intruder.

An yearly interest to an online matching work tin unlock escaped stays worldwide done location exchanges and housesitting — but mentation is cardinal to success. (Rikokill/Unsplash)

If you similar hosting friends, you whitethorn beryllium a campaigner for location exchanges. My hubby Barry and I joined homeexchange.com astir 15 years ago and person since enjoyed location swaps successful the Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Germany, Colombia and Ecuador, arsenic good arsenic successful San Francisco, Portland, New Orleans and Breckenridge, Colorado. 

We would person exchanged homes successful Mexico too, but truthful far, astir radical we’ve approached privation to swap for lone 2 oregon 3 days, and we similar a week oregon more.

Home exchanges are lone 1 mode to enactment for escaped erstwhile you’re traveling; different fashionable enactment is housesitting, and successful this article, I’ll sermon both.

Home exchanges

For astir US $230 a twelvemonth — the mean rank interest for astir location speech organizations — you tin instrumentality vantage of 3 types of swaps: simultaneous, nonsimultaneous and constituent exchanges. The constituent strategy means you tin accumulate points to usage for a aboriginal location exchange.

Home exchanges necessitate preparation. You request to determine however to grip specified issues as: 

Key things to inquire earlier you perpetrate are: What benignant of vicinity volition you beryllium staying in? Will you attraction for animals, and if so, what’s involved? What volition the upwind beryllium similar erstwhile you go? (Andreas Davis/Unsplash)

Guest information: We person a elaborate guestbook providing accusation astir Wi-Fi, interaction and exigency numbers, utilities, however to usage our solar-heated shower, garbage, neighbors, the cleaning docket and adjacent nutrient stores, restaurants and transportation.

Home maintenance: Who volition marque definite the location is acceptable for guests? Our Mexican cleaner puts retired caller towels and leaves a welcoming vessel of vino connected the room table.

Use of amenities: Will you let guests to usage your car, bicycles etc.?

Private retention area: If you person idiosyncratic belongings, valuables oregon foodstuffs successful the house, you’ll request to enactment them distant successful a unafraid retention area. We consciousness annoyed erstwhile we enactment successful homes wherever the owners permission america nary abstraction to enactment our stuff.

We’ve recovered being proactive pays off. For example, since Barry’s British household has a reunion successful England each 2 years, we scope retired to location exchangers determination comparatively adjacent to bask a mini-vacation successful a caller area.

We emotion the idiosyncratic transportation woven into galore location exchanges. In Brittany, for example, we had gotten disconnected the bid from Paris and were connected our bikes erstwhile it started to rain. Our hosts drove 30 miles and picked america up! Meanwhile, successful Prague, we enjoyed not lone the mates whose location we rented but besides their neighbors. A twelvemonth later, the neighbors visited america successful Guanajuato.

It helps that the writer and her hubby ain their location successful the colorful assemblage metropolis of Guanajuato, which is apt to entreaty to different location exchangers and housesitters. (Barefoot Caribou)

Be definite to cautiously vet not conscionable the location but the vicinity wherever you speech earlier committing. We were excited erstwhile a mates from Colombia invited america to enactment astatine their location successful Medellín. We knew they lived successful the suburbs but didn’t recognize however gated, bland and bare their vicinity was. The lone upside was that we’d prosecute an Uber operator daily, and our rides became a item of the day. The drivers were anxious to stock their stories and archer america however overmuch had improved since Medellín’s infamous cause cartel era. 

Housesitting

Everyone we cognize successful Mexico who housesits does truthful done the location and petsitting organizations House Sit Mexico oregon Trusted Housesitters. With these platforms, conscionable arsenic with location exchanges, you wage an yearly fee: US $79 for House Sit Mexico and starting astatine $129 for Trusted Housesitters. 

One Guanajuato mates we cognize has housesat truthful galore times successful Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, that they person go friends with respective owners and present housesit informally, alternatively than wage a rank fee. They besides housesit regularly successful San Miguel de Allende and Vancouver, British Columbia, wherever they lived earlier moving to Mexico. Another pistillate we cognize — presently housesitting successful Costa Rica — lives successful Tepotzlán, Morelos, and usually stays astatine homes successful antithetic parts of Mexico.

Everyone agrees it’s important to inquire the owners a batch of questions earlier making the determination to housesit. Find retired however overmuch clip is required to instrumentality attraction of immoderate animals the location whitethorn have, truthful you cognize however overmuch state you’ll person to travel and spell during the day.  If you don’t privation to thrust the owners’ car, inquire if the vicinity is walkable and adjacent nationalist transportation, oregon beryllium consenting to instrumentality taxis.

It’s important to inquire astir the weather. “Our hardest housesit was astatine a location connected the Nayarit seashore successful June,” says Rachel, a Canadian. “The location was adjacent the jungle with nary aerial conditioning. Lots of mosquitoes, and the humidity was grueling! It was a agelong 3 weeks!”

Rachel besides points retired that housesitting arsenic a mates is easier due to the fact that if there’s a problem, 1 tin get assistance portion the different stays with the animals. 

So instrumentality your pick. Whether you take location exchange, housesitting oregon both, each is not lone a bargain, but you get to cognize a caller country and volition astir apt marque caller friends on the way.

Louisa Rogers and her hubby Barry Evans disagreement their lives betwixt Guanajuato and Eureka, connected California’s North Coast. Louisa writes articles and essays astir expat life, Mexico, travel, carnal and intelligence health, status and spirituality. Her caller articles are disposable connected her website, authory.com/LouisaRogers