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Hi, I've found all my 522 caches with my (old) iPhone 4. As somebody mentioned you have to be careful with the device, as it's not particularly keen on water and on falling, but it does the work perfectly.I may approach the caches with the street view, and when getting closer use the satellite view, but I guess that's just a personal thing. Anyway, I haven't yet seen the need to buy any GPS device Regards

+1 I had a cache on a perfectly legal place nicely hidden in a tree. Several cachers had unpleasant experiences with a neighbor living 50m from the cache that seem to had some psychological problems. Geocaching is supposed to be fun, so I just moved the cache a couple hundred meters further where the only "neighbors" were cows & horses. Haven't got any complaint since

2000? Here in Belgium I've found one from 2004 and that's almost "prehistoric"

The story goes like this ... ...more than a year ago, one of my FB friends posted something strange, with an icon of a white box and a green cover (TB), and then another day the box had a yellow cover (Multi). Eventually we talked about it and he showed me quickly what geocaching was ("walking with a goal" is how he called it). That wasn't clearly something for me, on one hand I'm pretty good at hiding my car keys at home on D5 places without any effort, and on the other hand my sense of orientation is famous worldwide, I must be one of the few persons in this planet that managed to get completely lost in his hometown Anyway, exactly one year ago, day by day I decided to deviate a few hundred meters in my daily run and try to find "something" I had no clue how it would look like. To my biggest surprise, and thanks to the hint .. I found it !!! exactly 365 days, exactly 500 caches (timing is everything) and 12 countries later I've learned, oh yes I have learned: ... on my first months I learned: - That "Spoiler" is not the name of the dog appearing in all pictures of a local series - That if you think you have to destroy a tree to get to the cache, then you're probably looking at the wrong place. - That cachers aren't necessarily the best friends of trees and chapels - That you don't necessarily have to cache nightcaches by night, and you know what? On daylight is muuuuch easier !! - About creepy creatures hiding under rocks I've never thought would exist - About labradorite, feldspar and many different types of rocks with a looong story behind. I really admire the EarthCaching community, shame there aren't that many EC's around - That on a D1,5 you don't have to climb a tree nor to jump over a wide creek, regardless of what the GPS may think - How stupid I look on a webcam when I'm trying to take a pic with my iphone in the middle of a busy street of "that" website - How frustrated it can be to be a FTA (First to Arrive) and still STF - How great it feels to log your FIRST FTF - That FTF stuff is not for me. My work is stressing enough, and finding a cache as 1000th person can feel as good as being the FTF (honestly) - That FIC (First in Country, I mean my first cache in a given country) is MAGIC - That D/T ratio is country-dependent. A German D1/T1 can be as challenging as a Belgian D2/T2 or a Portuguese D3/T3 ... I can prove that!! - To be thankful to the one that decided not to delete old Virtuals, when you just have one shot on a very remote country, that's the best thing you can land upon - That I'm VERY fortunate to leave in Flanders (Belgium) where we have almost as many caches as inhabitants, and to work in Germany, where definitely there are more caches than citizens - That I can disappear in WW bunkers and climb to (small) trees and enjoy it like a small child - That I will never log a T5 cache (and that's fine) - That a Multi doesn't mean a stash, and then a stash and then ...but that the stash may JUST be the last thing (trust me, it took me a looong time to realize that) - That a "?" cache in a map, may mean a puzzle, or a bonus, or a challenge or an unknown size or ... who knows !! - That, my assumption that geocachers is a secret society of rare organisms coming from outer space hiding millions of objects below our noses wasn't completely accurate. Geocachers seem to be humans!! I've met 3 of them in my 500 caches, and they looked quite normal - That, thanks to attending one of their secret gatherings (they called it "MegaEvents") I realize that not only they are humans, but they look suspiciously similar to me (40-50 years old, kind of easy-going) Then I moved to the next phase .. hiding my own caches !!! And then I learned again, I learned: - Why some of the caches I was searching weren't really on GZ ... because my first ones weren't there either - How crazy FTF seekers may be. You don't want to know on which weather were some of my caches first found - to hate shorts "Found Easily!" logs. Well, if it was D1,5/T1,5 what did they expect, a nano up 20m in a tree somewhere in the Amazon basin? - that some caches have legs. You put them somewhere, then they go somewhere else, then they get back - how tough it can be to convince a reviewer to post a cache, specially a Challenge one - how neighbour-sensitive some caches may be (I had to relocate two, that were on a, presumed, perfectly fine site) And finally ... I even bought TB's !!! and then .. I learned: - that the romantic idea of letting your TB's travel around the world is just that, a romantic idea. I have 3 TB's out there, one hasn't been found yet (challenging cache) and the other two are probably gone for good. - that this point is statistically proven. Out of the many TB's that theoretically should be on the caches I was logging (remember 500 in 12 countries), less than 10% were still there But anyway, I don't want to close this first-year-log on a sad note. Honestly it's been a lot of fun, have discovered many interesting places, sometimes VERY close to home or places I often go to, I've learned a lot about their big or small stories, have georun (more than half of my caches have been logged on some kind of running tour)different paths than the ones I used to, and with every smiley, there was as well a smile on my face Wait, and what now? Well since I discovered a 10 years old nest-cache falling apart in Germany, I've found old caches cute, so I may try to fill in the month-calendar one of these days, other than that there are still 2.000.000 something stories to discover ... I can't wait! Keep on caching !!

There are some 180 caches within 10Km distance of Castellon center. More than 400 witihn 25Km. Considering that the East part is the Mediterranean sea, so no caches there ... ... it's not that bad. 998 caches (according to www.geoardilla.es) on Castellon province. 59 on the city boundaries. Well, it's clear that it depends what you consider "good" or "bad". A group called "La Orden del Carajillo" placed 210 caches along a GR. Other than that if you look at the city itself, it's pretty empty. I haven't looked at the density of caches around the World, but fact is that where I happen to live (West-Vlaanderen, Belgium)we are slowly running out of place to put new caches (I know I'm exaggerating), so as Einstein said "everything is relative" but seriously, if I would be living down there right now, I would "clean the area" quite fast. That's why I'm trying to find out ways to motivate the people in the area to get more involved in the game. Just FYI, I looked to the website you mentioned (pretty good, thanks!) and after less than one year of caching I would already be the 55th geocacher in the Comunidad Valenciana in terms of Finds, I mean ....

As long as you do not tell us the name your home country, one needs to speculate. Personally, I do not think that caching in areas with almost no caches will get more popular by placing challenging caches. Of course, by adding an additional cache you can increase the number of caches, but the number of local cacher depends on a lot more. There are countries in Europe where given the economic situation it is not too surprising that there are hardly any caches and hardly any local geocachers. You cannot compare Greece, Albania, Bosnia etc with countries like Germany, Belgium or the Netherlands. Well, the reason I wasn't naming the countries was because I needed support on the "idea" rather than any more or less biased opinion about the countries themselves. Anyway "A" is Spain and "B" is Belgium. I share the first part of your statement. I don't expect the Spanish caching community in Castellon (that's the 100.000 inhabitant city I mentioned) to explode but who knows, if Belgians start to know that there's something down there and the Spaniards that there are a lot of caches in Belgium, I think that may help if just a bit to increase the caching "awareness" in the area. I'm too new in Geocaching to judge about the reasons of higher or lower density in one area or another but it seems to me that it has nothing to do with economical situation (economically speaking Catalunya is not much better than Valencia and in Barcelona there are caches everywhere). I think it's more a question of spreading the news about the hobby, somebody knows somebody that caches and then starts playing ... Personally I learnt about geocaching almost by accident. It's not the kind of thing that are in the papers or on TV, even in the net, if you don't search it ... you may never know that such a (in my eyes) great "game" exists cu

@All, thanks for your feedback. I think I have enough inspiration for my "cache of two countries" idea, really appreciate. @etarace, between "A" & "B" there are 1.600 km, nothing really for a drive, and I think I didn't mention that the issue was with countries, but with "that area, with just 3 poorly maintained caches in a city of 100.000+ inhabitants." and that statement is still valid (I'm trying to convince the person that placed one of those 3 caches to put a few more, but that's a different story) Regards

Hey, I was born in country A and moved to country B around 20 years ago (both in Europe). Around a year ago I started caching, love the game, the outdoors experience, the "be a child again" thing, the stats and so on. Now in country B we have caches everywhere, but when I went last winter back to country A, I realized how desolate the caching map is on that area, with just 3 poorly maintained caches in a city of 100.000+ inhabitants. In order to try to activate a bit the caching in A I was thinking to create some kind of "two countries" cache, where, in order to have a valid log in the "B cache" you must find somebody to log the "A cache". Do you know if such a thing would be acceptable? and if yes any particular consideration I should have while creating the caches? (Regarding the CO, the idea would be for me to maintain the B part and my sister the A part) Looking forward to your ideas Thanks in advance

Hallo, I'm relatively new to geocaching (11 months / 380 caches) and even more to earthcaching (3 in three different countries ), but on those three I got some kind of strange feeling about how this thing is put together. - On my first one, I got a very kind mail in reply from the CO confirming my answer and since then we are "friends" in geocaching - On the second one, I sent all the measures to the CO and still have to get any kind of answer - On the third one I did an "experiment", namely I was there, took the pic, but did NOt send a mail to the CO with the answers (that I do have). Reason is that a few previous logs were complaining by the lack of reply by the CO. As I expected, my log is still there. Btw,looking at the profile of the CO he hasn't logged a cache since years, so I guess he left the game. My question is, is there anybody checking if the Earth Caches are still valid? A tradi (at least in Belgium where I live) that is not maintained, sooner or later will be disabled and archived by the "central admins", but by its nature I don't think that is something likely to happen, isn't it? and somehow ... I don't think it's really fair. Looking forward to your comments Regards

@ StefandD, wel, heel erg bedankt voor je link. Ik heb alle voorwarden gelezen, daarover "geargumenteerd" naar greensprouts toe, en eindelijk is mijn eerste Challenge cache een feit: GC50KT9 ... die voorlopig wacht op zijn FTF

Hallo, Deze dagen ben ik bezig met de plaatsing van mijn eerste puzzle cache. Die is gebaseerd op luchthavens, en ik vond een leuke idee om te "eisen" als voorwarde voor een geldige log dat men tenminste 5 "luchthaven caches" op voorhand had gelogd. Niks aan de hand dacht ik ...wel, blijkbaar is niet zo eenvoudig. Gisteravond kreeg ik een melding van de "Geocaching.com Volunteer Cache Reviewer" waarop staat (letterlijk) -"De door u gestelde extra voorwaarde om te mogen loggen wordt aanzien als een Additional Log Request (ALR). ALR's worden niet meer toegestaan, naam in het logboek is een geldige log. Gelieve deze ALR te verwijderen, of minder dwingend te maken. bijvoorbeeld: het zou leuk zijn als....." ... en dat versta ik helemaal niet. Op minder van 10 km van mijn voordeur zijn er twee redelijk nieuwe caches waar het wordt "geeisd" om min 100 caches te loggen in respectivelijk 5 en 6 landen "of anders wordt de log verwijderd" er is ook een "Project 81" waar men MOET de D/T Matrix vol te hebben of anders wordt de log ook verwijderd Mijn vraag is ... en waarom mag ik dan hetzelfde niet doen??? Wachtend op uw feedback ..

Hola, Soy español pero llevo 15 años viviendo en Bélgica, y desde hace un año o asi me ha cogido el gusanillo del geocaching bastante fuerte. El motivo de que escriba es que tengo una duda "metafísica". En las ultimas semanas he creado mis primeras caches y hay un tipo que ha puesto una entrada en mi log que me hace hervir la sangre: Mi texto en las caches es en ingles y en holandes, pero el "hint" lo pongo siempre en español, bueno pues el muy @x!!! me ha puesto (traduzco literal del holandes): "Una sugerencia para el CO: lee las instrucciones respecto a las "hints", puede ser que domines el español, pero lo que haces no tiene sentido y es "not done", incluso en nuestra sociedad moderna con redes Wifi y Smartphones. Por qué no eliges el ruso o el chino? Asi estas seguro de que nadie te entiende" Le conteste via mensaje que soy español y que no he leido nada en las instrucciones contra el uso de la lengua materna en los hints, y que por favor corrigiese su entrada. No lo hizo ni me contesto, asi que 3 dias mas tarde borré su log de my cache, Bueno pues el muy imbecil ha escrito hoy otra entrada repitiendo lo mismo y con pitorreo con la entradita (traduzco del holandes de nuevo) "Nuevo intento, despues de que el CO borrara injustificadamente mi entrada de su log" Y ahora que hago? 1) Sigo jugando al gato y al raton con él, yo borro el reescribe, yo borro el reescribe 2) Le amenazo de muerte si no contesta a mis mails, para que me conteste de una vez si tiene algun problema con el español? 3) Archivo la cache 4) Me borro de geocaching? En mi humilde opinion el tema del geocaching tiene que ser divertido y no un foro en que seres superiores den lecciones a los demas sobre como tenemos que comportarnos, no creeis? A la espera de vuestras noticias Saludos desde Bélgica

I'm a Spaniard living in Belgium since quite a few years and got in touch with geocaching last June, and since then it's become more a passion than a hobby. When I got close to 300 caches I thought it was about time to bring something "back" to the community and I started hiding my own caches, but I've started to get double thoughts about that. So far I've hidden 8 caches, and I've got lovely comments like: "Niet gevonden. Ook niet zo veel zin om hier lang te zoeken. Er zijn zeker mooiere plaatsjes in Tilleghem en Zedelgem..." "Jammer dat er niets te vertellen valt over de directe omgeving van de stash om over te schrijven in mijn log." (Nochtans is de weg naartoe wel leuk, vind ik toch) "FTF logje volgt nog." .. 7 days later still nothing And the one that made me think that I may not place a cache again: "Toch even een tip voor de legger. Lees de guidelines i.v.m. de bedoeling van het plaatsen van een hint op een listing er eens op na, want het kan best zijn dat jij de Spaanse taal onder de knie hebt, maar wat je doet is zinloos en eigenlijk 'not done'. Zelfs niet in onze moderne maatschappij met draadloze netwerken en smart phones. Waarom niet meteen kiezen voor het Russisch of het Mandarijns? Dan heb je absoluut de zekerheid dat niemand je begrijpt." I mean, is it mandatory to be an #@!!X&& to be a geocacher??? I'm really, really disappointed. I understand that these are my first caches and I still have to learn, I wonder if some of the expert cachers that have found thousands of them understand the same. P.S. Mijn nederlands is redelijk goed, dus men kan antwoorden in 't nederlands of in 't engels ... of in 't spaans, ik heb wel GEEN probleem ermee P.S.2. Er was wel EEN vriendelijke geocacher die me rechtstreeks informeerde over een "boze buur" in de omgeving van een van mijn caches, dus niet iedereen is "slecht" ... maar toch

Hi, Since a few years I've been if not a "serious" runner, then definitely a "constant" one. I'm running almost on a daily basis, do a couple of marathons per year and all that stuff. Anyway, a few months back I discovered this geocaching thing, which not only fits perfect with my love for maps, travelling and getting out, but also with my running activities. Now instead of doing always the same running tour, I can do georunning on one direction on day 1 and on another direction on day 2 .. and it's much more fun than just running. Now, I'm not posting to tell you about my life, but rather to ask you for some hints about the GPS to use. Right now I'm running with an iPod nano on one arm, an iPhone with the great Geocaching app on the other (so I don't have to dismantle my headphone installation everytime) and a good old Garmin Forerunner 305 on my wrist, in order to find the way home. This installation fits perfectly to me but has two drawbacks: - The iPhone battery doesn't last forever - One day the iPhone, by accident, will (hard)land on a rock, or go for a swim, and that may be the end of the story. So, any ideas for a GPS that is robust AND paperless AND light AND fits for running (I don't want something bumping on my chest on every step)? Thanks in advance

Hallo, I'm new to this, so please excuse me if this point has been answered somewhere else (if it has .. I haven't found it) My question is the following, today I was doing geocaching and found a cache really soaked so, I logged it as "needs maintenance". Now, the curious thing is that though I obviously found it, it doesn't show up on my "found" stats. I don't think it makes any sense,so if anyone could clarify, I would really appreciate Thanks!