besem

Many congratulations to Zambeziboy for his 1500, as well as to Henzz' 1500th, the log for which I had the privilege to receive on one of my caches!

Jors is the man to speak to - he created the original municipality mapset.

What happens on the mountain, stays on the mountain. #thatisall

Many congratulations to AndyT1 on completing the FIZZY challenge on one of my caches! I heard of his plans during the Lesotho event and had to keep mum until he had achieved it. Looking forward to the next spate of FIZZY tourists visiting Grahamstown to pick up the only 5/4.5 in the country. It's a true 5/4.5, as I'm sure the Crazy Cape Quartet can attest to.

Is anyone going to be at the border at around 10:30 on Friday morning that could give my friend Ruth a lift up (and down on Sunday)? She'd love to come hiking with us, but I'll be going up with the AndyT1 group, an already full car.

Some links that my serious-hiker cousin sent me - could be useful to some. http://www.vertical-endeavour.com/forums/19-lesotho-hiking/812-thabana-ntlenyana-gps-tracks-from-sani-top.html http://www.vertical-endeavour.com/forums/19-lesotho-hiking/3779-thabana-ntlenyana-via-sani.html

Blast. I use www.geocheck.org for all my puzzles... I'll wait a few days - hopefully the issue will be resolved.

Could also be simply that the newer caches are easier to find, i.e. a large number of <2* difficulty caches. You can probably check the trend of the average difficulty rating of caches over the years?

I've taken note of the puzzles, and I'm licking my lips... just need to find some time to tackle those nasty Cape Town puzzles again. Still haven't figured out CapeDoc's Number Crunch. But hey, if I can dish it out, I had better take it...

The cache Table Top Trove has been named this week's Geocache of the Week - many congratulations to the Richter Family!

Whoa. These logos are EPIC. Well done Hesamati!

Many congratulations to Antron on #2000 caches! It was great to have you achieve it on one of my old caches.

True north is the way to go, in my opinion, especially if you are required to make projections for a cache. For small distances like 20m it hardly makes a difference, but over hundreds of meters you'll end up way off. I know some caches use magnetic north, but they normally specify this.

Thanks for the news - I'll phone the police and ask if anything's been found. I'm not particularly hopeful, though. At least there wasn't much of value lost.

Ah yes, THIS is what caching is all about... it was great meeting some more CT cachers (Goofster, WHY do you look SO familiar?) in their natural habitat. Many thanks to The Eaves & Capeccr for leading me to places sane men avoid - a year's worth of excitement squeezed into a day I will surely not forget. The spelunking was epic, even if it's not something I'll sommer get stuck into (pun intended). I did get down to find that my luggage has been looted from my car's boot (I guess rentals attract attention), but the loss was minor enough not to be a worry. The car's a rental, so that's off my plate once the police paperwork was done, and for some reason the thieves only took my suitcase full of dirty clothes, but passed up on my smartphone, which I decided to leave in the boot (right next to my suitcase). Go figure... Sien julle almal weer voor die einde van die jaar! And Andy, I'm watching your progress - I might be persuaded to tackle Frodo's Journey sooner...

It was an honour to accompany Andy T1 on his quest for 800 - many congratulations!

Thanks for the offer Andy, but I got sorted in the meantime. See you ask tomorrow!

Is anyone going to the Rondebosch area tomorrow afternoon after the caving expedition? I'm staying at the Little Scotia guesthouse and trying to figure out transport logistics for tomorrow. I can get to the starting point in the morning, but I'm still untangling the getting back and to the airport bit.

Awesome! Can't wait. I see the forecast for Sunday is a bit on the cold & rainy side, but I guess that is of little consequence once inside a cave!

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. From the comments and clayjar, it seems to be a toss-up between a 4-star and 4.5-star (clayjar gives me 4.25). I'll make my decision soon.

I'm in the process of setting out a series of caches for the Grahamstown Event in a few weeks' time, and I'm having difficulty deciding what rating to give the final bonus cache. The rating system on the GC website gives my terrain rating as at least a 4.5, but when is it OK to claim that the terrain is "very difficult" and hence deserve the 5-star terrain rating? I'd appreciate a few opinions from the South African community. To give a bit of background, to get the clues for the final will require about a 8-12km hike to get the clues, a portion of which will be hiking where there is no trail at all. Then to get to the final will require another short bout of bundu-bashing, and if placing the cache was anything to go by, you'll arrive at the final location pretty scratched up, unless you find the easy way in, which is in itself a bit dangerous (well, by capeccr's standards it'll be child's play, but still). My gut feeling tells me I should stick to a rating of 4.5 (e.g. comparing it to Frodo's Journey, which almost surely has more difficult terrain than my cache), but I'd like to get a feel for what other cachers think.

Hmm... Stellenbosch?

The view looks like Postcard on the Rocks, but I don't remember that note in the log roll. Yup, spot on. You're it!

I had a chuckle when I read "Don't steal it, put it back" written on the logsheet...

Hmmm, this looks like that cache at Cape Point where I got scratched so badly by taking the difficult route to the cache... Olifantsbos Submarine Lookout?