Our Approach
Arriving in Sotogrande for a much needed holiday some ten years ago we were very excited after a long period of hard work to be able to relax and enjoy ourselves There was only one problem: we had forgotten our keys at home! Luckily a friend was looking after our house and happy to help us out or we would have been stranded in the middle of the night.
The next day the children wanted to swim, but the water had turned a dark green brownish colour. There was also a dead mouse floating in it. It took another three days of explaining ourselves in Spanish before the problem was resolved.
During the same visit we arranged a trip on our boat to go out and watch the dolphins. When we arrived at the marina the boat was half-covered in water There had been a storm several days before and no one to look after our boat.
Another time, the gardener called us in Belgium, explaining that he'd seen water running under the front door. Desperate, we asked a friend who happened to be on vacation in Sotogrande at the time to help us out Fortunately, he was able to do so before the damage got too out of hand.
During a subsequent visit we had arranged to have a barbecue with neighbours, only to find that the kitchen was covered in ants. Nobody had been around to notice this.
Once, the electricity had been cut off. Apparently there were insufficient funds in one account, and forgetting that we had another account with enough money in it, the bank allowed the standing order to go unpaid In the meantime, the food in the fridge had gone off, there were insects everywhere, the alarm was off, the pool was a mess and the garden was dying as the spnnkler system didn't work It took us almost a week to get everything right again.
We even came to a house covered in blood once. A bird had fallen through the chimney and hurt itself trying to get out. The place was a complete mess and since nobody had been around in our absence, it had remained like that for a long time.
But even simple things like arranging to import a car. fixing a buggy or stocking the fridge before our arrival during a bank holiday can be highly complicated when you have no support structure to fall back on. We tried to do it all ourselves, with a little help from our friends, but our many unfortunate and costly expenences taught us otherwise. This is why we established Soto Comfort Care when we moved permanently to Sotogrande, in order to ensure that others wouldn't spend so much of their precious time here fixing problems.
Anne van Uffelen Founding partner of SCC