Buks & Sonja
Buks & Sonja
Retired couple willing to travel anywhere in the world as long as there is a rail, road, river or airport.
About Buks & Sonja
We are Buks and Sonja Botes, a South African couple who have been married for 38 years, went on early retirement in 2016, left our family home and two bunnies in the care of a long term house sitter and have since been travelling the world full time. I retired from my position as a marketing executive in 2016 after a long career with an internat...
We are Buks and Sonja Botes, a South African couple who have been married for 38 years, went on early retirement in 2016, left our family home and two bunnies in the care of a long term house sitter and have since been travelling the world full time. I retired from my position as a marketing executive in 2016 after a long career with an international mining company and Sonja retired after 25 years in real estate. My role in marketing took me, and many times Sonja as well, to many interesting destinations over the globe and after retirement we just kept on traveling. We speak English and Afrikaans (and as such can understand Dutch as well) and we are in the process of acquiring some Spanish language skills.
We used to live on a small farm in the north eastern part of South Africa, a few kilometers from the world famous Kruger National Park where we raised our two daughters amongst horses, cows, sheep, pigs, birds of all types, 7 dogs and a few cats. After approximately 20 years on the farm and mainly due to my frequent travelling and not being able to spend enough time with all the domestic responsibilities, we designed and built our dream home in the beautiful city of Nelspruit. None of our animals could come with us as our new home was situated in a small wildlife estate with small dear, numerous bird species, a family of mongoose, a troop of monkeys and a variety of snakes and the occasional python and porcupine. We did rescue two house bunnies a while ago who have found a safe haven in our garden though and they are loved by both our neighbors.
Two years ago we bought a motorhome and a car in the USA and we currently do an annual tour of North America (USA and Canada) of roughly 6-8 months at a time. The rest of the time we explore other interesting places in Asia, Europe and South America and we return to South Africa for a brief period for annual medical checkups and to spend a few weeks at our home and visiting with my daughters, friends and family before we are off again. Our intension is to reduce the time spent in the USA/Canada to around 4-6 moths a year and spend more time exploring the rest of the world.
We are a healthy, active and organized, couple with sober habits, nonsmokers and very easy to get along with. We are friendly, can operate independently and we are respectful and trustworthy and excellent communicators. Sonja is a pescatarian, loves to take photos and she also has a bit of a cleanliness phobia and likes to get things cleaned and organized and as we are both Virgos, we have a preference for order and structure. We don’t mind getting our hands dirty though to clean after ourselves, fix what is broken and sorting out problems. We sometimes enjoy just hanging around, cook, read, listen to music and be homely. I get the occasional inspiration to fix things although I am not giving myself out as an expert.
We love to be on the go, meet people, see new places and have different experiences. We do some cycling and love to take long walks/hikes, explore the local scene and just talk to people. We don’t care much for tourist places or big shopping malls and prefer the local scene, with local food, farmers markets and a basic lifestyle. We love nature and can spend hours walking in the woods, watching birds and other small creatures. We are extremely adaptable and can find comfort and joy in either a city, town or rural area in developing countries from Asia right up to first world destinations.
Why we want to house sit
We have decided to house sit as it enables us in a different and unique way to do all the things that we love to do like exploring new destinations, meeting people, experience new cultures and the local scene. It may also be a remedy for the occasional bouts of homesickness that we experience - although rare - as it is sometimes just great to be in a homely environment and to have some pets and or domestic animal around you - it is like therapy I suppose.
Due to our lifestyle we do not have any animals/pets and having our "own" pets, albeit on loan, to care for from time to time can only be a bonus and whatever animals we have to care for, we have most probably done it before when we lived on our farm. We both miss interaction with animals and Sonja especially has a hard time with not having animals around us. She finds comfort subscribing to a few pet and animal You Tube channels and we spend a lot of time just having fun and laughs while watching the animal videos.
Our experience
We are two capable individuals with enough common sense and instinct to firstly spot and avoid problems and secondly to sort problems out if and when they occur. We are seasoned travelers who have braved many different countries with strange situations, modes of transport, food and people and we can confidently handle most challenges thrown at us. We can function independently, are trustworthy to a fault and we are essentially kind and responsible people with a strong sense of duty and that is also the way in which we brought our children up.
As far as looking after your property is concerned, we have our own very large home with a pool and a garden in South Africa which has a permanent house sitter and we know how important it is to have someone you can totally trust and rely on to make good decisions, be responsible, take care of your possessions and respect your personal space. A family home represents the whole history and memories of the owners, the space is personal and whoever looks after the property should enjoy the home but, should also respect the space for what it really is. Sonja and I are both very private people and we appreciate the fact that it is not easy to just let someone into your home.
Concerning the pets/animals, we lived on a small farm with house pets, animals both domestic and wild, for the better part of our lives and as a family we had to care for them when they were sick, got injured, helped them to give birth, brake up fights and also cared for them when they were old and frail. On many an occasion we had to wipe our daughters' tears (and our own) after loosing a favorite pet or rescue animal. We rescued numerous small animals, we frequently hand-raised small birds after being thrown out of the nests during storms or high winds. I had been stung by honey bees many times while collecting them to feed a nest of abandoned bee eaters once - we have many tales to tell of our rescue efforts over the years. We had a house duck at some point as well as a goose patrolling our garden, a pair of tame Indian Mina birds who were extremely jealous and refused to share my attention with the rest of the family. We kept fish, bunnies and guinea pigs as well as birds and pigeons. The short of it is that we love animals and we have experience taking care of them and having animals around us is very natural.
We understand the emotional bond between pet and owner and the trauma of separation that pets endure when the owner is away and the best we as house sitters can do is to attempt to fill the gap by giving care and love to the animals.
We recently stayed in an Airbnb in Oslo for a week and we were tasked to look after the house cat which ended up sleeping at my feet every night - and we loved it and we made friends with the guy from the start. We are currently back home in South Africa for a few weeks and we love to feed our tame bunnies and spoiling the wild deer with vegetables, fruit and other treats.
If we were home we would care for our home, garden, and swimming pool and we would do minor maintenance and repairs whenever necessary. If we housesit for someone, we have a pretty good sense of what our responsibilities and attitude should be, apart from the tasks of cleaning and looking after the pets.
External references (1)
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Matt - Character Reference
18 January 2019
I've known Buks since 2009 and can confidently recommend both him and his wife Sonja to look after your house and pets. Buks is a man of detail and is meticulous in everything he does. They are both very well travelled and Sonja's caring personality is exactly what your pets and house need!
You w...I've known Buks since 2009 and can confidently recommend both him and his wife Sonja to look after your house and pets. Buks is a man of detail and is meticulous in everything he does. They are both very well travelled and Sonja's caring personality is exactly what your pets and house need!
You will struggle to find more responsible and self-sufficient people than Buks and Sonja and we know they will make great house sitters.
Matt & Annél Strydom- Organised
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- Reliable
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- Self-sufficient
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- Tidy
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About Buks & Sonja
We are Buks and Sonja Botes, a South African couple who have been married for 38 years, went on early retirement in 2016, left our family home and two bunnies in the care of a long term house sitter and have since been travelling the world full time. I retired from my position as a marketing executive in 2016 after a long career with an international mining company and Sonja retired after 25 years in real estate. My role in marketing took me, and many times Sonja as well, to many interesting destinations over the globe and after retirement we just kept on traveling. We speak English and Afrikaans (and as such can understand Dutch as well) and we are in the process of acquiring some Spanish language skills.
We used to live on a small farm in the north eastern part of South Africa, a few kilometers from the world famous Kruger National Park where we raised our two daughters amongs......
We are Buks and Sonja Botes, a South African couple who have been married for 38 years, went on early retirement in 2016, left our family home and two bunnies in the care of a long term house sitter and have since been travelling the world full time. I retired from my position as a marketing executive in 2016 after a long career with an international mining company and Sonja retired after 25 years in real estate. My role in marketing took me, and many times Sonja as well, to many interesting destinations over the globe and after retirement we just kept on traveling. We speak English and Afrikaans (and as such can understand Dutch as well) and we are in the process of acquiring some Spanish language skills.
We used to live on a small farm in the north eastern part of South Africa, a few kilometers from the world famous Kruger National Park where we raised our two daughters amongst horses, cows, sheep, pigs, birds of all types, 7 dogs and a few cats. After approximately 20 years on the farm and mainly due to my frequent travelling and not being able to spend enough time with all the domestic responsibilities, we designed and built our dream home in the beautiful city of Nelspruit. None of our animals could come with us as our new home was situated in a small wildlife estate with small dear, numerous bird species, a family of mongoose, a troop of monkeys and a variety of snakes and the occasional python and porcupine. We did rescue two house bunnies a while ago who have found a safe haven in our garden though and they are loved by both our neighbors.
Two years ago we bought a motorhome and a car in the USA and we currently do an annual tour of North America (USA and Canada) of roughly 6-8 months at a time. The rest of the time we explore other interesting places in Asia, Europe and South America and we return to South Africa for a brief period for annual medical checkups and to spend a few weeks at our home and visiting with my daughters, friends and family before we are off again. Our intension is to reduce the time spent in the USA/Canada to around 4-6 moths a year and spend more time exploring the rest of the world.
We are a healthy, active and organized, couple with sober habits, nonsmokers and very easy to get along with. We are friendly, can operate independently and we are respectful and trustworthy and excellent communicators. Sonja is a pescatarian, loves to take photos and she also has a bit of a cleanliness phobia and likes to get things cleaned and organized and as we are both Virgos, we have a preference for order and structure. We don’t mind getting our hands dirty though to clean after ourselves, fix what is broken and sorting out problems. We sometimes enjoy just hanging around, cook, read, listen to music and be homely. I get the occasional inspiration to fix things although I am not giving myself out as an expert.
We love to be on the go, meet people, see new places and have different experiences. We do some cycling and love to take long walks/hikes, explore the local scene and just talk to people. We don’t care much for tourist places or big shopping malls and prefer the local scene, with local food, farmers markets and a basic lifestyle. We love nature and can spend hours walking in the woods, watching birds and other small creatures. We are extremely adaptable and can find comfort and joy in either a city, town or rural area in developing countries from Asia right up to first world destinations.
Why we want to house sit
We have decided to house sit as it enables us in a different and unique way to do all the things that we love to do like exploring new destinations, meeting people, experience new cultures and the local scene. It may also be a remedy for the occasional bouts of homesickness that we experience - although rare - as it is sometimes just great to be in a homely environment and to have some pets and or domestic animal around you - it is like therapy I suppose.
Due to our lifestyle we do not have any animals/pets and having our "own" pets, albeit on loan, to care for from time to time can only be a bonus and whatever animals we have to care for, we have most probably done it before when we lived on our farm. We both miss interaction with animals and Sonja especially has a hard time with not having animals around us. She finds comfort subscribing to a few pet and animal You Tube channels and we spend a lot of time just having fun and laughs while watching the animal videos.
Our experience
We are two capable individuals with enough common sense and instinct to firstly spot and avoid problems and secondly to sort problems out if and when they occur. We are seasoned travelers who have braved many different countries with strange situations, modes of transport, food and people and we can confidently handle most challenges thrown at us. We can function independently, are trustworthy to a fault and we are essentially kind and responsible people with a strong sense of duty and that is also the way in which we brought our children up.
As far as looking after your property is concerned, we have our own very large home with a pool and a garden in South Africa which has a permanent house sitter and we know how important it is to have someone you can totally trust and rely on to make good decisions, be responsible, take care of your possessions and respect your personal space. A family home represents the whole history and memories of the owners, the space is personal and whoever looks after the property should enjoy the home but, should also respect the space for what it really is. Sonja and I are both very private people and we appreciate the fact that it is not easy to just let someone into your home.
Concerning the pets/animals, we lived on a small farm with house pets, animals both domestic and wild, for the better part of our lives and as a family we had to care for them when they were sick, got injured, helped them to give birth, brake up fights and also cared for them when they were old and frail. On many an occasion we had to wipe our daughters' tears (and our own) after loosing a favorite pet or rescue animal. We rescued numerous small animals, we frequently hand-raised small birds after being thrown out of the nests during storms or high winds. I had been stung by honey bees many times while collecting them to feed a nest of abandoned bee eaters once - we have many tales to tell of our rescue efforts over the years. We had a house duck at some point as well as a goose patrolling our garden, a pair of tame Indian Mina birds who were extremely jealous and refused to share my attention with the rest of the family. We kept fish, bunnies and guinea pigs as well as birds and pigeons. The short of it is that we love animals and we have experience taking care of them and having animals around us is very natural.
We understand the emotional bond between pet and owner and the trauma of separation that pets endure when the owner is away and the best we as house sitters can do is to attempt to fill the gap by giving care and love to the animals.
We recently stayed in an Airbnb in Oslo for a week and we were tasked to look after the house cat which ended up sleeping at my feet every night - and we loved it and we made friends with the guy from the start. We are currently back home in South Africa for a few weeks and we love to feed our tame bunnies and spoiling the wild deer with vegetables, fruit and other treats.
If we were home we would care for our home, garden, and swimming pool and we would do minor maintenance and repairs whenever necessary. If we housesit for someone, we have a pretty good sense of what our responsibilities and attitude should be, apart from the tasks of cleaning and looking after the pets.
Verifications
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Basic level
Email Address, Phone Number, External references (1)
Animal Care Experience
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Dogs
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Cats
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Reptiles
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Fish
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Poultry
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Farm animals
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Bird
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Small pet
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Preferred Countries
Profile Details
Age
Occupation
Travelling as a
Previous house sitting experience
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