House sitting in Central America and the USA

Now retired from the US Airforce, Mike has been house and pet sitting full time since August 2011. In that time he has been a house sitter in Costa Rica, experienced a very unusual house sitting job in Panama, and enjoyed several house sits in his home state of Florida in the USA. Here he shares some of his more unusual stories from his house sitting adventures.

"Most of the time house/pet sitting is uneventful, sometimes it can even be considered routine. You take care of pets, water plants, and keep the house and yard clean. Basically you live your daily life with the one exception; you’re living in someone else’s home."

"Then there are those times when things are not so normal. Take for instance an experience I had in Costa Rica where the sit started with one dog and four guinea fowl. Before we left to take the home owners to the airport, I let the fowl out of their coop to roam. Later that evening when I put them back into the coop for the night there were only three. I looked around until dark to no avail, so decided to look again in the morning. The next morning I let the three fowl out and within about 5 minutes the forth returned for breakfast, but at night, the forth was gone again. I notified the owners about the come and go guinea fowl and they told me not to be concerned with it.

When the home owners returned from their vacation, the wandering fowl had still not returned and I told them that I had been hearing a fowl in the neighbours yard for the past few days. A couple days after I had departed the home owners sent me an email with the following extract ‘you're an uncle! Berta has at least 10 babies!!’".

"Another interesting experience is when I agreed to house sit in Panama City, Panama. While in Costa Rica, I responded to an ad on TrustedHousesitters, and was four days from returning to the US when I received an email from the owner. She stated the assignment was to sit a hostel for her Spanish teaching school and after discussing the details which included 8 inbound students scheduled to arrive I accepted the position.

The first week went as planned with two students arriving at the international airport, staying one night, and then departing on a national airline to begin their Spanish classes in different cities. The schedule soon changed. By the end of my sit we had more than tripled the scheduled visitors and when the owner returned asked what happened. I explained I just communicated to the students that the hostel was open to all visitors and had several non-student visitors. I’m 56 years old and had never been in a hostel, and the first time I was in one I managed it and was offered a full-time job."

Most of my local house sitting assignments in Florida, USA are usually for a week or two and while on these assignments I spend most of my time visiting local attractions. One assignment was for a month so I joined a nearby golf course to improve my game and take advantage of the summer rates and warm Florida sunshine. When I walked in I was greeted by the general manager who asked if I wanted to golf for free, and of course I said yes. He continued by explaining that if I worked for the course I could golf anytime for free; then he offered me a job. I explained to him that I was only in the area for a month, but would be willing to help out while I was there. In the end, no free golf because he was looking for somebody that lived in the area and assured me the salary wasn’t enough to cover my 3 hour daily commute."

"And my final interesting experience was again in Costa Rica where I experienced two tooth shaking earthquakes. I had been in a couple of smaller earthquakes but on these two occasions when the earth started shaking in the mountains of Costa Rica, I got a little concerned. Both quakes were centered between 60 and 70 miles from where I was sitting and registered magnitudes 7.9 and 6.8. While they didn’t cause any major damage in our area they did closer to the epicentres. Even though we didn’t have any earthquake damage I telephoned the homeowner to inform her of the situation and reassure her that all was good with her property.

So when you’re house/pet sitting don’t be overly concerned with things that may happen, just remember that life will come at you no matter where you are. The key is to be prepared for the unexpected and communicate with the home owner. They will appreciate hearing it from you, their sitter, before they hear about it on the news or from one of their friends or neighbors.

As a homeowner, prepare your sitter for the possibilities of things that you’ve experienced and provide them with names and telephone numbers of your ago to people. This way if something happens the sitter can’t handle or one of those may happen things happen, they know who to contact."

Many thanks for the unusual house sitting stories and also the useful advice from experienced house sitter Mike Hopkins. To read more about Mike's adventures visit his blog Travel Thru My Eyes.

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