Geocaching While On Shore From Cruise

[+rxzephyr]

Wondering if anyone out there has tried to geocache while on shore during a cruise. My wife and I will be doing a Southern Caribbean Cruise next spring and would really like to be able to nab some caches while on shore.... However, lacking our Geocaching Mobile Command Center (read: CAR), I'm feeling a little less mobile than I'm used to. Do people rent cars or some other form of mobility for the day? Are they afraid of getting back to the cruise ship on time?

 

Wondering if anyone else out there has tried to encorporate geocaching into their cruising activities, how they got around the lack of mobility, and how successful they were.

 

RXZ

[+BlackstoneVal]

Did a tour similar to WaldenRun's below.

Edited October 16, 2005 by BlackstoneVal

[+WaldenRun]

Wondering if anyone else out there has tried to encorporate geocaching into their cruising activities, how they got around the lack of mobility, and how successful they were.

This summer I cruised from FL to the Bahamas with the kids. I managed to log six caches using a combination of taxis and feet. Here is the list:

 

http://www.geocaching.com/bookmarks/view.a...80-eb5eba186951

 

As my teenagers are not big cachers, I didn't venture very far from downtown Nassau.

 

-WR

Edited October 16, 2005 by WaldenRun

[SeaScout]

We just got back from a cruise to the Western Caribbean and did a bit of caching while in the ports. Found some, DNF'd one, skipped a couple because of transportation/time constraints. Program the waypoints into your GPS before you leave. when you're in port, see how far away you are and if its feasible to hit the caches. If its too far or time is short, skip them. The caches we found were generally set up so that cruise ship passengers could easily do them while on the islands.

 

Have a great time on your cruise. If you can squeeze some geocaching in between the sunning and drinking thats great. If not, who cares? You'll be in paradise either way.

[+JohnnyVegas]

We did a two last year,If I had told Julie we were only going to do geocaching I might still be in traction one we found is a micro at the docks in St.Thomas, We also got a Virt. in Nassua, Naussa was not a planned stop so I had to use the internet service on the ship to look up the caches there. We are doing another cruise in about two weeks and we are going to try and find some cache along the way in Catalina (27 there) San Diego, Cabo San Lucas, Mazatan and Port Valarte.

[+rxzephyr]

Thanks for all the posts so far! Great feedback.

Look forward to reading more people's experiences.....

 

Fortunately for me, my wife is as addicted to the whole geocaching thing as I am so I won't have to worry about the traction thing. I'm just not sure whether I should plan to go on shore excursions vs. just throwing caution to the wind and not caring. Aw heck, it's a vacation - no real need for me to get all worked up about it, right?

 

We're doing a Southern Caribbean Cruise that hits some Eastern Islands as well, We'll be going to Curacao, Isla de Margarita, Barbados, Dominica, and...St. Thomas. So, as long as we're docking close to where JohnnyVegas did, we'll likely go in search of that Micro if it's still around.

[+JohnnyVegas]

Julie does not mine the geocaching thing mutch, but we both wanted to do other things, She hates water so I took her snorkling twice . She also hates flying so I took her on a helicopter tour of St. Thomas

[+cheech gang]

There is one right at the dock on St. Thomas

[+JohnnyVegas]

Sure is, this is a link

Dock Sider

I just remembered I found it on my birthday

Edited October 16, 2005 by JohnnyVegas

[+sawdust]

My wife and I did several caches while walking around key West. Our ship had stopped in there on New Year's Eve a couple of years ago. We did the caches and made it back to the ship for the evenings festivities. It ends up we went on our own to all of the same places the tour guides were taking their paying coustomers! Geocaching actually saved us some money! Sawdust92

Edited October 16, 2005 by sawdust92

[+nscaler]

Got one in Puerto Vallarta two weeks ago. Three miles from the ship terminal. Rode the local bus system - great fun! .90 for two one way.

[+GeoCacheCruiser]

We just got back from a short cruise with stops in Nassau, CocoCay, and Key West. We created our own "shore excursion" by setting off on our own to GeoCache and had a great time. We walked to all our caches, but have read some logs of folks who rented a taxi. After all the food we needed to walk for the exercise.

 

The 1st week of December we are on a 10 day Mexican Riveria cruise, so we are really looking forward to getting our first Mexican caches and doing some fun exploring.

 

Exploring the world... one cache at a time.

[Mustcache]

I brought my newly acquired GPSr with us when my wife and I did a Boston to Bermuda cruise last October. We rented a scooter and drove all around the island.

Unfortunately, that was a couple of weeks before I had read about geocaching! Talk about bad timing!

Now I guess we'll just have to go back!

 

[+reveritt]

I have not done it myself, but I live in a port (Newport, RI) that is visited by cruise ships every year, and there are a number of good caches within walking distance of the dock where the cruise passengers land. I now that at least of few people have taken advantage of this.

[+JohnnyVegas]

This is the sig item we had made up for the cruise we are going on next week, we have them in 1 inch and 2.5 inch sizes.

 

 

We have these mace by Bumble buttons

Edited October 24, 2005 by JohnnyVegas

[+Shop99er]

We cached on a Hawaii cruise last year. What we did was arrange for a rental car at each port and had routes and lists made up on each island. I think in all we got over 80 caches in about 7 days.

 

The best part was telling of the adventures we had that night at dinner. While the rest of the people were being shooed off and on a bus all day we took all the time we needed to see things and saw a more interesting than they did.

 

If I had to do it over again I wouldn't change a thing. It was worth the money to rent the car and it was worth the effort getting the lists and routes together.

 

I highly recommend cruising that way!

[+CCATBQFM]

We found a few caches in Alaska a couple years ago. We had cache pages and coords loaded before we flew out to board the ship. One of our shore excursions actually got us up Mt Roberts in Juneau and we hiked the rest of the way (not extremely far, but very uphill) to the cache. Later in the trip, when we arrived in Anchorage we just put on our walking shoes and hit the streets. I can't think of a better way to cache or discover a new city than to just start walking!

[+Shrek & Fiona]

I rented a scooter and cached on nassau I ran out of downloaded info so I found a place to get on the net I think it was about $10 and then hit the road and got some more caches and very interesting places that I would of never seen

also did disney island I walked all of them but they do have a tram that will take you half way to the end of the island

[+Nighthawk700]

My wife and I took an Alaskan cruise last year. One stop was Sitka. The local cache hider had 4 caches designed for people on cruise ships. We did one near the raptor rescue, then went on the tour. Not only was the "paid excursion" from our ship there, (about twice the price, although they did get a van and we walked) the sign language interpreter for the other two deaf folks was with them interpreting, so we joined up with them (my wife and I are hard of hearing). Worked out great.