Fish Eagle

Please help if you can. I have been unable to contact the following cachers via email. Their accounts have been invalidated - I suspect their email addresses have changed. If you know any of these cachers, please contact them and ask them to update provinces on their cache hides. Blackman in Africa Fade-Dude Finebush Grawp Ian608 JacolR Jumanji2004 K-Clan Kwagga 1 Lance McBrayer Limn Orio Paul Pedro Quintus Moolman RadioAmateur Sandscratcher Team Myles Ahead Team Snakeseeker Tox (Toxicsox) Trackdown Xomoyi

Here's our fake rock - it used to be covering a cache, but now it's a TB, currently residing in (or rather, nearby to) cache OVP - Open Veld Playground in Gauteng. It's about 30cm in diameter, very realistic, and cost R175 at our local Garden Centre. Click here to see what it looks like....

Mrs Fish Eagle's been busy, and made a new batch of camo bags. Material (3m) and velcro cost R180, and made 3 large, 6 regular, 9 small, and 3 micro bags. Here's what they look like..... No, she doesn't take orders (read: hates making them!!!)

Updating of cache listings - current status..... Tues-Thurs : emails sent to all cache owners Lots of positive response from inactive cachers, but lots still to be done Total caches in SA - 2,091 Provinces updated already - 1,050 (50%) Not updated yet (active cachers) - 515 (25%) - Shouldn't be a problem Not updated yet (inactive cachers) - 526 (25%) - Potential problem Total number of cache owners in SA - 366 There's another positive spin-off from this exercise - several inactive cachers have said that they might start caching again, and I've seen some logs coming through from them in the past few days. To see which of the "golden oldies" have reacted positively by updating their listings, take a look through your province's cache list, especially the last few pages.

Regarding the questions raised by Neville Bailey "How long will it take for the owners of over 2000 caches in SA to update their cache locations? How will they even know that they need to / can update their cache locations?" and by Discombob "Methinks we will have to mail all those folks who don't read the forums. What about all those caches placed by folks who have stopped caching?". Valid questions - I've done a run through MPU caches and emailed the cache owners. I realised that there are several who are either inactive, and/or don't read the forums - and wouldn't know unless they are told. It's highly desirable to get all caches categorised by province - 100% must be our objective, but it'll take ages (read never) unless somebody actively works at it. I think that it will need a mailshot to all cache owners and an ongoing follow-up. When we're down to a short-list of problems, we might be able to get Groundspeak to help tidy them up? I have spare time, and am willing to give it shot. Let me know if you're OK with that. If I don't see any negative comment within 24 hours, I'll go for it.

Home made, a-la Mrs Fish Eagle (wreaks havoc with her sewing machine though)

Agree 100% They're horrible, and totally inefficient at their so-called purpose. We're slowly but surely working through all our hides and replacing the refuse bags with waterproof camo canvas bags. Done about 35 so far. We've also recently hidden two caches without any bags at all as a trial - just a high quality lock-n-lock container "au natural". We saw many like that in the UK, and amazingly, they were dry.

Province boundaries are pretty good on Microsoft MapPoint - click on the link on the cache listing. It's a bit slow to load, but the zoom in and out works well.

WOW!! 08:25am, and 10% of the country's caches are done already Doesn't anybody work any more???

South Africa is now sub-divided into provinces on geocaching.com BIG, BIG, BIG THANKS to Erik88L-R and Jeremy - much appreciated!!! Please edit the listings of your cache hides, so that they appear under the correct province.

Thanks Anton - much appreciated PM sent.

Big, big thanks CF for all the fun - we had a ball!! In case you guys don't see it on the event cache listing, here's the log we wrote today........... ....."We just wanted to congratulate the Fairies again, but from a different viewpoint. We have hidden many caches, and know how much effort goes into finding good locations, getting permission where necessary, and actually making a cache hide. We have probably found more of the Harties event caches than anyone else - because we enjoyed scratching out many more today, the day after the event!! (Was great fun - Nyaah! Nyaah! to all you guys who went back to work today....) We have also recently done a cache run through Bela-Bela and visited most of the caches left over from the previous event. Our opinion of these caches is not a quick "at the event" opinion, because we weren't there. We were very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the caches which we found in both areas. Sure, there are some lame micros, but there are many caches that are superb. We found caches in interesting locations, of a nice size, innovative hides, and commend the amount of effort that went into the preparation. Both Bela-Bela and Harties event caches weren't hidden in a quick day visit, for sure!! Well done Fairies, some big smilies for you!!! If you spot this log, and agree with our comments - then log a smiley too!!!".....

Big Thanks RedGlobe, Wildbirds and LeonW. What a superb cache - enjoyed it enormously, enjoyed the company, and all the caches we did together afterwards. What fun doing a joint effort like this - sure beats slogging it on your own!! Left Lindy's new Fish Eagle TB to soar from here - the cache is now so full of coins and TBs, it'll be a fitting reward for the next sucker!! LeonW - I agree with someone else's comment, you're the MAN!! What a lesson in determination!! You will remember this cache forever, and it will give you the wherewithall to attack even bigger challenges with the belief that you CAN DO IT!!

Ours arrived yesterday - Great Coin!!!

I'm wanting to get back into software development again after a layoff of 10 years, and need to upgrade my skills and development tools into the 21st century. In the past (which goes back quite some time...), I have designed and written business systems in Assembler, Cobol, Basic, DBase, Xbase, Clipper, Visual Basic, Delphi, and probably some other languages which I've already forgotten. I would appreciate advice about which languages, development tools, database types, etc are currently in vogue for developing business systems, and which new tricks will be the easiest for an old dog to learn. If you think you can help, please drop me an email.

Done Deal!!! Saturday, 8th Sept, 08h00, meet at the parking co-ords for North West's Best View. RedGlobe and Fish Eagle will be there, anyone else is very welcome, especially if you're young and strong, and feel like piggy-backing some older cachers up the mountain..... Maybe bring your friends with - we've got lots of camera equipment and refreshments to get up there too. Afterwards, if we survive the hike, we're going to hunt the 3 caches at the Ring, and crawl across to Pelindaba to make a nuclear confession by the phala-something olive tree. BTW Leon, I didn't realise you were a leg man The calves might look "athletic" to you, but what you don't see is the arthritis , rheumatism , and innate laziness that hampers their potential performance!!!

Thanks RedGlobe - looking forward to meeting you at last... PM sent.

GCGYQA - North West's Best View - I'm planning to hunt this cache sometime on Saturday morning, 8th Sept, but it's one of "those" caches where Lindy and her asthma take a rain cheque...... Anyone interested? It would be great to have some company....

As Guineafowl said, on Saturday we spent the day checking on caches in the Sabie/Graskop/Lydenburg area after the terrible fires a week ago. We checked all caches along the route we took - a total of 35 caches, and only found 2 destroyed, and 2 with damaged containers. Of our own caches, we only lost one, and that wasn't even fire damage - the location was bulldozed before the fire. This is a miracle - vast areas have burnt with great intensity, but many caches had miraculous escapes. There are several where the fire stopped within 50m of the cache??!!! Vulcan, the Roman god of destructive fire must be a geocacher!!! We had a secondary, ulterior motive - we've got TB's and geocoins coming out of our ears, so it gave us the opportunity to drop many off, and move some travellers that have been stuck for a while. We cleaned out Guineafowl's TB "hotel" at "Where is Jock", dropped some cool coins including a new Erik88L-R coin, and took the 4 Diabetes bugs that she's been hoping someone will eventually move on. But ha-ha, we dropped off another 4 Diabetes bugs just to keep the cache nice and full!! We drove past Berlin Falls for about the 100th time since we started geocaching, and couldn't resist the temptation - we hid a cache. We've left this very obvious cache location open for almost 2 years - sorry locals, you snooze, you lose - now it's too late!! Hope you enjoy the cache.

Great coin - well done Huskies!!! PM sent.

We were in the mountains above Pilgrims at the time, and got back home today. The fires missed us (just), but on Saturday we had smoke that you couldn't see 100m. The devastation is horrendous!!! We travelled through Pilgrims and Sabie today, and we've uploaded some photos onto this cache. Meerkats, in answer to your question - yes. Vast areas have burnt, but a lot has not, and it'll be a big reality-check for you to actually see the power of fire shortly after the event. Nature has amazing regenerative powers - amidst all the devastation and still smoking remnants, we saw a totally unscathed duiker run across the road. Our cache "The Big Fire", on which we uploaded the photos, was hidden to remind us of the terrible fire 3 years ago - this one is much worse. Everything has burnt in that area, including most of the new trees which were planted after that fire, except a small stand of trees, 2 or 3 hectares, directly in front of the cache. Our hearts and condolences go out to the families of the victims, who number about 15 so far, mainly firefighters, who lost their lives trying to protect others. Also to the smaller property owners who have suffered debilitating losses - like a small timber farmer near Witklip Dam who, a week ago, agreed to the placement of a cache on his property. He has lost everything except his house.

Hi Bats, We've been eyeing Amajuba for some time already - driven past several times, but never had the time and the courage. We could be in - have you got a date yet?

PM sent to DBob (to try and convince him that he'll do a great job!) There's a trick to collecting the info - you need to read every log in your region. This sounds formidable, but it's not - I read about 90% of the logs for the whole country, and it works fine with slow Telkom. You need to set up notifications (premium member feature), for traditionals, multis and puzzles. The notifications have a radius of 80kms, so it needs a bit of map research to work out the centre point of each notification - to minimise overlapping (duplicate logs), and gaps (missing logs). Three or four circles will cover WC except the very outlying areas (can watchlist those caches). This means setting up 9 or 12 notifies. The notifications are by email - short and sweet, and download very quickly. I browse through them, put aside anything of interest, and delete the rest. When it's newsletter time, I work through the saved logs, and use the link in the notification to call up the cache listing - actually quite painless. Then, to find cool images that have been uploaded - I browse through the active cachers' profile galleries to see what's new and interesting. Hope this helps - Good luck!!

I've been lurking and watching this thread for a while, and wondering about GAD - got it, or not? Decided it must be a quite a serious "got it". Today we went cache hunting and drove 600 kms through Swaziland and found 4 caches. Was it worth it - absolutely YES - they were stunning!! When you have no caches within your 80 kms circle, only 9 within 160 kms, and 7 of them are in a neighbouring country, then that's a bargain! Is it a problem - naught!! We're going there again next weekend because there are 2 that were on our radar today that we didn't get to, because we need the old bush-basher to get there and we were in "soft" wheels today. The thread title says "How to make it stop?". Must agree with Cache-fan - Why?? Guess all addicts say something like this, and don't realise they need help until it's too late? Who cares - enjoy the ride!!! Happy caching all - take it all, but take it easy.

To the best of my knowledge there are three geocoins which originated in South Africa - An untrackable geocoin, a few years ago. I don't have a photo, but I did find one in the wild and remember it as being a very beautiful coin. Our Fish Eagle geocoin - 2006. We minted 250 in three metals. South Africa geocoin - 2007. We own 5 of them - 4 purchased, and one was a gift from NotBlonde.