ThomasFamilyZA

Project GC has stats like countries cached in, see here: http://project-gc.com/Statistics/TopNumCountries?profile_country=South+Africa&submit=Filter

There is one flaw with these statistics which is a function of geocaching.com only allowing one owner for a geocache. Someone like BrendsZA who is an active part of ThomasfamilyZA and has been involved in all the caches we have hidden doesn't get any credit for them as they are all owned by ThomasfamilyZA.

I was trying to download URWIGO today, and I keep getting an error when the download program runs as it gets to the end of the download: Application validation did not succeed. Unable to continue. when I look at the detailed log the error is: ERROR SUMMARY Below is a summary of the errors, details of these errors are listed later in the log. * Activation of http://apps.yourself.cz/Urwigo/Urwigo.application resulted in exception. Following failure messages were detected: + File, Urwigo.pdb, has a different computed hash than specified in manifest.

GC1F9T2 Bat Cave in Bethlehem in the Free State was good fun too.

We will be in Cape Town for the week from the 27th April to the 5th May, and are looking for some advice on where to focus the time we will have for caching. We plan on visiting the top of Table Mountain and spending some time at Kirstenbosch already, so will just plan around those depending on the weather. The one cache we really want to try find is Sentinel View, and the nearby Elephant Proctology cache looks like fun too. The trail up from Silvermine looks quite nice, and if we can solve a few more of the impossible puzzles by then would probably be worth doing that as a day there. The alternative seems to be to climb up from Chapman's Peak towards those caches, but the climb appears much steeper although a shorter distance then. Any advice on the caches in this area and how tough the trails are would be greatly appreciated, given that we will be doing it all as a family, so my 10 year old daughter and 12 year old son will be with us. Are there any other areas that are really worth visiting? thanks ThomasfamilyZA

My son is 12 and has had his own account since he was 10. We backlogged the caches he found whilst he was part of our family account, and he logs all his own caches now.

Thanks, it has been great fun over the last year and a half getting there

For us the numbers add a different dimension to caching, and it is about the numbers, our personal ones. For us it is more than just the number of caches we have found, and we have done various things to get a cache of a particular type, or altitude, or D/T rating, etc. If you just look at the stats, that only gives a small part of the story and experience. It doesn't tell you that the 200km's we drove to get one cache above 3000m to be able to improve on our Head-In-The-Clouds badge was through a really scenic part of Lesotho. That we had a great picnic lunch on the top of the pass. That we stopped at a waterfall so that the kids could taste fresh mountain spring water for the first time. It doesn't tell you about the first terrain 5 we targeted, where we detoured so Brendan and I could go crawling through the Bat Cave and had awesome fun together. The day we got 53 caches in one day, looking at our stats just shows we found the P&M Cache Dash series. It doesn’t show the awesome day I had with Brendan where the two of us worked together the whole day to find all the caches when they were published. How we found the last ones as the sun set to wrap up a wonderful father-son day. We will do the GPS series one day, as part of personal challenge to see if we can, but also as part of spending a family day together, planning beforehand and then working together on the day to see if we can find 400 caches in a day. Sometimes we get up early to chase a FTF that was published overnight, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we drive 50km's to sign the log on a complicated puzzle that we solved first to claim the FTF just because we can, sometimes weeks later we are still trying to figure out the puzzle. The stats create an additional element for us, and encourage us to do things we would not normally attempt. Many of these experiences would not have happened if we hadn't been trying to fill in a block or tick a box on the stats, and that is what makes geocaching so much fun. It can be customised for the way you want to experience it, and you can play the game the way it suits you.

We could release one for you in Johannesburg, South Africa

I agree, GSAK is just a tool. Being able to compose all your logs in one application without having to load every single cache page, and then publish all the logs with one press of a button is useful. The fact that you can log any TB's and geocoins too whilst creating your cache logs is also really useful. TFTC logs also come from smartphones and iPads, so don't blame GSAK for that.

We could release one in South Africa for you, email sent

I use a similar setup with Vodacom, where my email is 082xxxxxxx@vodamail.co.za and it sends me an SMS whenever I get a new email to that account, I am only aware of missing a new notification once.

Mine all have the images on again, but the sizing has gone all weird and for most of them the picture is cut off

We are meeting in the parking area at 3:30, it should take around an hour and a half to get all 5 caches in the park. Anyone who is joining us, please let me know so that we wait for you before setting off.

We are planning on going for our next walk in The Wilds on Sunday the 29th January (weather permitting), some time mid to late afternoon. Anyone that wants to join us, let us know so that we can finalise a time

I know several cachers wanted to do the caches in The Wilds, but wanted company for the walk. If anyone wants to do the caches in The Wilds with us, Brendan and I are able to accompany you for the walk on the bonus public holiday the 27th December, preferably in the morning. Contact me if you are interested so we can try organise a suitable time.

Our TB3ZT92 has 15,857 miles since 17 September 2011 (just over 10 weeks ago), it started in South Africa, went to Indonesia, South Korea and is now in the USA.

Try some of the other accredited dealers, like geoswag or coinsandpins, who will deliver to other countries. The postage just gets expensive for small orders though. I've used them both with no problems to get deliveries to South Africa.

Got the same problem, but it is only 2 out of 10 that show the TB logo, for the other 8 the original images still show up

Shouldn't the website tell you to only use the first 15 characters of the code? I tried several times to unlock the one we played a few months ago, and then just gave up with it, at least we logged the find on geocaching.com. Just tried it now by dropping the last character and it worked.

Thanks, this works really well, added all our TB's onto our profile with this tip

As a fellow South African, I can sympathize with Geelvink's position. Once you buy something from the US, pay in Rands (which has depreciated a lot in the last few weeks with the global economic position), and add international postage and customs etc. it can cost a lot more than $5. I have discovered some cachers in Pretoria and Johannesburg who import large orders which spreads the postage costs out a lot, and then sell them at events, there are also some online South African shops listed on the Groundspeak store that are worth getting in contact with. We have a variety of coins and travel tags from various sources around South Africa, and if you look around can get some reasonable value.

Don't have anything that can run the offical app so I can't really say anything about that except that is what someone said in a similar thread that they were doing when using an iPhone for Geocaching. Maybe they don't know field notes would mark the cache as found. I only they do as I have a Blackberry Torch and thats how it works, other caching Partners have iphones and HTC and they all work the same. You have the choice to publish as a log or a fieldnote, either way it marks it as found on the device. Also being a PM with a phone helps as you can run PQ's and save them offline so its not always using the mobile internet, great for areas with no coverage. Beg to differ, I have the Groundspeak iPhone app and logging field notes does not mark the cache as found on the device. The only way to show it as found is to publish as a log and upload it in the field. Where you publish as a log you have the option to publish as a Field note (drop down). Obviously did not explain well. With the iPhone app, if you create a field note, it does not mark the cache as found on the app, it shows it as something you have not found yet. If you create and upload a field note, it does not mark the cache as found on the app, it shows it as something you have not found yet. If you create a found it log, but don't upload it, it does not mark the cache as found on the app, it shows it as something you have not found yet. The only way for the cache to show as found on the app, is to create a found it log, not a field note, and upload it. We used to log TFTC in the field and upload it, as that was the only way for the application to show what you had found around you in real time. We would then go back to the website and fix the logs afterwards. Now that we are better organised, we create a field note with a brief note about the cache, and then use that to compose proper logs later on.

Don't have anything that can run the offical app so I can't really say anything about that except that is what someone said in a similar thread that they were doing when using an iPhone for Geocaching. Maybe they don't know field notes would mark the cache as found. I only they do as I have a Blackberry Torch and thats how it works, other caching Partners have iphones and HTC and they all work the same. You have the choice to publish as a log or a fieldnote, either way it marks it as found on the device. Also being a PM with a phone helps as you can run PQ's and save them offline so its not always using the mobile internet, great for areas with no coverage. Beg to differ, I have the Groundspeak iPhone app and logging field notes does not mark the cache as found on the device. The only way to show it as found is to publish as a log and upload it in the field.

Couldn't agree more. I agree too, fortunately we cache with the iPad handy, and log the FTF as we get it, which firstly gets us the first log registered, and secondly let's others know it has been found. If we didn't log it straight away, wouldn't be that stressed that someone else gets it logged before us