Happy New Year!
Vanessa and I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and are enjoying a great start to the year.
The first 2017 issue of House Sitting Magazine is brought to you from Mexico (again), where we are currently between house sit assignments.
After changing our Cuba travel plans, we didn’t have anything booked for January, but were hoping something would come up. So we were very pleased to receive an offer in December to look after a house in expat favourite, Ajijic, on Lake Chapala, which is where we are right now.
However, this is only for the last two weeks of the month, so we still had to find somewhere to live during the first part of January.
AirBnB came to the rescue once again.
Note: If you want to know more about using AirBnB and get some great tips for making bookings, see “Filling the gaps with Airbnb” in this issue (Issue #7).
We found a beautiful little place just outside San Miguel de Allende, way up in the hills. We had a little house all to ourselves, with amazing sweeping views of the valley.
We were “semi-off-grid” and the whole rancho, which consists of several houses and an artist’s studio, collects and maintains its own water supply. In the day solar panels store energy from the sun, feeding excess power back into the grid. At night the grid supplies electricity back to the property.
We used a composting toilet which was very well-built and easy to use. And the water for our shower was heated naturally by the sun.
Although far off the main grid our hosts have a great line-of-sight internet connection, beamed from San Miguel, and we had a blisteringly fast connection.
Both Vanessa and I managed to fit in a few extra hours of online teaching to cover the costs of our short-term rental. We haven’t had to do too much more work though, as this place only cost USD $25 per night. What a bargain!
In the daytime we enjoyed some amazing remote hiking in the hills behind the property.
This is the view from the top of the mountain behind the house.
For anyone visiting the area, check out Rancho DaNisha here:
Cozy colorful eco friendly house
We hope you enjoy this issue of the magazine (Issue #7), and as always we look forward to your questions or comments.
Ian and Vanessa
(currently house sitting at Lake Chapala)