Andrenikki writes for www.spice4life.co.za
(Below was sourced from the
Spice 4 Life.)
Geocaching
A few weeks ago my husband got a new high-tech toy for his birthday – and since
then we’ve discovered a fantastic new sport/hobby that has us following clues
all over the place to find treasure stashes.
No, we haven’t taken up the pirate lifestyle, we’ve started geocaching.
Pronounced “geo-cashing”, it involved using a GPS-receiver (the new high-tech
toy) to find hidden caches at specific latitude and longitude co-ordinates. The
cache is often a weather-proof Tupperware or similar container. Inside you’ll
find a log book (which you must sign to prove that you were there) and usually
a few trinkets (bouncy balls, toys, sometimes even CDs). If you want to take
something out, you have to put something else in.
You can also find travel bugs, an item with a tracking code attached to it,
which travels around the world, sometimes on a mission that its owner has given
it, sometimes just to rack up the miles. For example, we found a travel bug
called the “Legend of Bigfoot geocoin” in a cache above Hout Bay. He originated
in Virginia, USA, and has travelled over 45 000 km so far!
To start geocaching, we had to register on the official website,
www.geocaching.com; from there we can download the co-ordinates of the caches
in our area. Amazingly, there are over 300 caches hidden within an 80km radius
of my home in Cape Town! And less urban areas aren’t neglected either – found a
cache on a top of a very picturesque and remote mountain pass between
Kwazulu-Natal and the Free State over Christmas.
So why do we do this?
|
|
It’s a great chance to get outdoors and have fun – geocaches are rated
according to difficulty (some involve solving clues) and terrain (can be
anything from 2 metres outside the car to a long and difficult hike), so you
can choose what type suits your fitness and the amount of time you have.
It’s something you can do as a family – kids love the idea of hunting for
treasure and many people even take along their dogs.
It’s also shown us some wonderful places we’d never been to before – right here
in our city. Caches are normally placed at interesting locations, and in the
short time that we’ve been geocaching, we’d already made some wonderful
discoveries.
The initial start-up costs can be pricey (GPS receiving devices vary in cost
depending on what type you want), but once you’ve got one, the costs are
minimal for hours of outdoor hunting!