Motorhome Exchanges - swoppers tales

They lived 2 hours north of San Francisco and came to meet us from the plane, taking us up to their place where we stayed for a couple of nights. It was such a good welcome. We sorted the van contents, borrowed their cell phone (we never used it) and then set off. We travelled all the way down through Big Sur, San Diego and into Baja California over a period of 5 weeks, having a fantastic time and no troublw with the van either. It helped that Peter said it wouldn't be the end of the world if we 'dinged' it! ON return, we met them at the airport in San Francisco, handed the keys back and waved goodbye. They have become friends and we look forward to seeing them again, even if we never do another swop. They came to us this year to use our van in Ireland - it was all organised through our son as we were not going to be in the UK when they came over. THey had no rain in Ireland for 6 weeks (unheard of), had no problems with the van and loved it! A great start for swopping.

So far we have only done one other swop, in NZ when we used a Nissan. The roof leaked the first night, badly, but repairs fixed that, and again we sorted out the money at the end. They are comign over this summer to use our van. I find that if you treat the van as you would treat your own, usually things are OK. A list of contents is a great help - we didn't have this on the second swop and the result is that we have still got one of his tupperware containers (not a big deal really!). Obviously we replaced anything that got broken, or at least communicated any problems. I would encourage anyone to do a swop as it is such a cheap and easy way to have a great holiday. You do have to not be so attached to your van that you can't bear the thought of anyone else using it though! That can take a bit of getting used to. We have had lots of emails from all over the world from people interested in swopping. We could go and have a very inexpensive holiday in all sorts of lovely places!

Philip