Back in the early 1990s, when my family joined Intervac, an original home exchange network and pioneer in the sharing economy, we didn’t have a home computer. Intervac, short for International Vacation, was launched in 1953 by a group of Swiss teachers with more vacation time than money and the idea to exchange homes during school holidays. Intervac now facilitates exchanges for 30,000 families.
When we did our first house exchange with a family in France, back before personal computers and the World Wide Web, Intervac mailed us a catalog of the homes available for exchange. My wife would write letters to the potential house exchange families, and it would take weeks, sometimes months to arrange an exchange.
Now with the internet, email, and jpeg photos, introductions and information on possible home exchange is easy and instantaneous, but it’s still more work than booking a hotel or other rental accommodation.
We have organized almost two dozen exchanges in the last three decades, ranging from that first French family’s tiny apartment near Centre Pompidou in Paris and their charming, heritage farmhouse on the Gironde River (and an almost-equally ancient Volkswagen Beetle), to a coffee plantation on the big island of Hawaii, a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in Reykjavik, Iceland, and a large, gated home with a swimming pool and a brand new Renault sedan in Aix En Provence.
We’ve exchanged our tiny (less than 1,400 square feet) home in Victoria’s prestigious Oak Bay municipality, a converted dairyman’s shed from the neighbourhood’s original, 19th century farmhouse, with a variety of homes in Europe, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala and the US. Despite our 40-year-old garden of flowers, fruit trees, berry bushes and vegetables, a large collection of local art, and an even-larger collection of books and recordings (10,000 and still collecting!), we’ve always traded up.
We’ve exchanged for homes in Madrid, San Sebastian, and Grenada, Spain, a couple of apartments in trendy Brooklyn, New York, an apartment and car in a Montreal suburb with a coveted parking place in the city, a beautiful home in the hills above Berkeley, California, and a luxurious home in a gated community in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
We’ve visited San Miguel de Allende twice and stayed in lovely, gated homes on the edge of the old, Mexican colonial town. In Guatemala, we exchanged with a family who had a sprawling estate on the shores of Lake Atitlan with a staff of five including maids, gardeners, and a property manager who brought us fresh fruit and bottled water daily. Aldous Huxley called the volcano-rimmed Lake Atitlan the most beautiful lake in the world.
Not all exchanges have been simultaneous, and we sometimes take extended road trips and visit grown children and our six grandchildren while our home is occupied by exchange families who share their second homes with us. Some non-simultaneous exchanges lead to shared experiences and friendships. A Portuguese couple with an apartment in Lisbon and a pair of beachfront apartments in the Algarve shared a couple of weeks with us in Portugal, taking us to their favourite restaurant and a wine tasting event, shared birthday celebrations, and spent two days driving us through local towns and countryside, pointing out the estates of international celebrities. Our host was a real estate lawyer who shared lots of local tales of the rich and famous.
Sometimes the non-simultaneous exchanges are never completed. One couple broke up before they could visit our home in Victoria. A quirky Brooklyn bachelor couldn’t come because his dog was too old to travel. He calls every year or two to say his dog died and he still plans to come stay in our home.
One Italian couple, who we met while visiting Cuba, didn’t want to come to Victoria but offered us one of their homes in Macerata on the Adriatic coast and one of their cars. My wife and I spent three, wonderful workweeks visiting Venice and the hill towns and glorious beach and wine lands of the Marche region, driving south as far as Puglia then returning to spend weekends with our Italian hosts and their extended family of close-knit, childhood friends.
Our last meal in a Macerata restaurant included almost two dozen new Italian friends asking, “Joseph, when are you coming back?” I’m working on getting them to come to Victoria.
House exchange saves money on accommodation, but more importantly you’re not isolated in a hotel zone. House exchange allows a traveller greater access to the country, community and lives you’re visiting. Cooking and shopping for food is a great way to learn about another culture. So is sharing an apartment building. So is sharing a gated community. When the exchange includes a car, you have an economical way to discover even more far-flung parts of the countryside.
We offer our guests the use of my old Subaru, my wife’s bike, and our kayaks and kayak equipment. We leave a pile of books, magazines and newspaper clippings about life in our neighbourhood, Victoria, Vancouver Island and Vancouver. We leave ferry boat schedules, tourist brochures for Butchart Gardens and whale watching tours.
We love to share our home and its nearby amenities with hand-drawn maps to the nearest gas stations, supermarkets, corner stores, bakeries and coffee shops. We direct our guests to favourite local art galleries, bookstores, restaurants and theatres. More than once during non-simultaneous exchanges, we’ve stayed in Victoria with neighbours and enjoyed serving as local tour guides for our new friends.
In semi-retirement with more time for travel and less income, house exchange is a great way to travel. You meet interesting people from all around the world, and it’s lots of fun!
More Information:
us.intervac-houseexchange.com
USD$115/year membership, USD$195/two-year membership, 7-day free trial
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