Hi Happy TH Travelers and Home Owners
Hard to imagine that Hubby and I have been housesitting now, non-stop, since August 2017. It’s been an extraordinary experience.
I hope everyone on here has had the same wonderful experiences. Not only have we learned to live with so much less (own only what we can fit into our three suitcases), but I’ve also become a professional author.
All I can say is, ‘Who knew?’
Hi Monika, welcome! That’s great that you’ve been sitting full-time since mid 2017! Care to tell us how you navigated through the time when the pandemic started to rear its ugly head? Were you stranded somewhere that you could stay longer?
Navigating COVID as a Housesitter March 2019 to Now
I remember the eerie silence. I, in this context, is interchangeable and means ‘we.’ Hubby and me.
We had just finished a four-month housesit in Victoria, BC, and landed on our home base in Calgary for a short sit.
The news about COVID, still being called the corona, was inescapable. There was talk of vaccines and travel passports; people were stranded on cruise ships and literally dying to get off.
Our hosts were going to the Dominican Republic. They left for their winter escape, and we settled into our routine with Trixie–the super dog.
It was cold. Before doing the housesit in Victoria, we’d been on a housesit to Boquete, Panama (we used to live there), and a six-month stint in Europe and the UK. Housesitting is fantastic.
Protective surgical masks were on the horizon. Masks were something people wore in Asia to combat smog. Handwashing was already on our schedule. I read about Semmelweiss years ago.
After the Northwest Calgary housesit, we were scheduled for a 3-week sit in Canmore, Alberta. A breathtaking village with a foothold on the Rockies and a gateway to Canada’s crown jewel, Banff National Park. Canmore canceled on us a few days later.
No one wanted to become a statistic and be flown home on a humanitarian flight on Canada’s dime. The uncertainty of everything was uncomfortable. Our hosts were enjoying the Dominican sun, but rumors about an evac started to buzz.
The number of available housesits on TH, and other sites became fewer each time we clicked. Although we no longer own a darn thing, we had options. Our host returned a day earlier than planned. Their vacation didn’t get canceled, but they experienced the tropical getaway under an ominous cloud.
My sister came to pick us up. Calgary has a main thoroughfare called the Deerfoot Trail (Hwy2). When I worked in the city, I spent hours on it stuck in traffic. That Saturday, you could have rolled a bowling ball down the road and hit nothing. While it was cool to have the road to ourselves and do the speed limit (kidding, my sister tested her Lexus), it was utterly like some foreign entity invaded the city and sucked the life force from its veins.
A few weeks later, the world was in lockdown. The uncertainty became as threatening as the virus. We moved to Okotoks (close to Calgary) and stayed with a friend. Every day we cruised the pages of the housesitting sites and world news.
We were scheduled to go to Panama and housesit. That didn’t happen. I think we had six or seven flights canceled at the time. Although we could have eventually made it there, that heavy cloud of uncertainty made us anxious. We have residency status in Panama, but our family would have ‘freaked out’ if we would have attempted the trip.
We found a long term housesit up the street from our friend’s house. This time our hosts flew to Ecuador. Most people didn’t realize that you could still travel. The world was in lockdown, but there were windows. Although the virus, the government, and uncertainty impacted flight schedules, people could still get to their destination, eventually. The downside, a fight that once took four or eight hours now took 24.
After Okotoks, we accepted a repeat housesit for Mexico from May to October 2021, just north of Cabo San Lucas. We became good at managing the repeated disappointment of having our flights canceled. If you got to the US, flying was an option.
We lost track of how often our flights were rescheduled, canceled, and rebooked. American airlines handled our refunds like gracious champs. Our Canadian airline took nearly nine months to manage our cash refund.
In May of 2021, we flew from Calgary to Denver, overnighted, and then on the Cabo. Under normal circumstances, this flight would have taken less than five hours. But we got there.
Before we left, we got our first dose of the vaccine and hoped to get our second in Mexico. Canadians are very spoiled, by the way; that’s been our most important lesson from traveling. Mexico was deserted. Cabo, which is usually so vibrant and a hive of tourists, was like a ghost town.
It’s cool to experience any tourist location without the hub, but the people were hurting for an influx of money.
Coming back from Cabo was another nightmare. The five-hour flight turned into a 48-hour ordeal. (Not COVID related, but COVID impacted.) We survived having to quartine for two weeks.
When you decide to housesit full-time as we have, you learn to take the good with the not so good. Our experience housesitting has been nothing but fantastic. Learning to live without or being creative and making due is a vital skill.
We specialize in long-term sits and love every minute, every cat, dog, and fish that comes under our protective care.
So far this year, we’ve regretfully turned down six offers to housesit. There are only two of us, and we can only take one assignment at a time. We’re available for somewhere warm for December 2022.
Never get sick of a Pacific Sunset
Hi @Monika. Welcome to the forum. What a riveting story! I would love to have traveled internationally during 2020 but didn’t have the nerve. I’m glad you did and had a wonderful time.
Thanks for joining us here on the forum. We’re glad you’re here.
What a beautifully true statement. We’ve been questioned on why we choose to travel full time with so many “what-ifs” “what about this” and it comes back to our choice. We’d have good and bad whether traveling full-time, part-time, or not at all.
We’ve chosen to fully embrace travel and not live our lives in fear.
