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Geocaching And Safety Threats


vespax

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This article was sent to me by my old boss, who I still can't get to find a cache, dispite working for a GPS company and an avid hiker/kayaker!!!!

 

Post 9/11 caches

 

I was stopped and questioned by police about 6 months ago as I was searching for a micro that I never found. Luckily I wasn't accused of more serious things.

 

Taryn and I also were told to leave an area by police in the Cape Flats when I tried to place a cache there. It was not approved though.....

 

Anyone else have police/ranger/fireperson stories to share?

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here is a log of mine from Dusit Zoo, Bangkok cache>

When i logged the DNF, the owner was kind enough to tell me he had the wrong co-ords listed - of course, but then I did not want to fly back to thailand to find cache :lol:

 

WOW! I only noticed now this has a difficuly of 4.5 which explains why i never found it. this was my last of 6 no finds in thailand due to problems likes missing caches, transport worries, monsoon rains, tough security guards etc. This one seems to be caused by some odd GPS reading maybe.

My co-ords led me to a corner of the zoo, and then showed me the cache was 100m on the other side of the fence, in what looked like flats busy being worked on, so i left the zoo by a close entrance and come from another angle, only to be chased away by more guards, telling me that was the offices of the royal palace. I tried from the other zoo entrance then, only to be chased away by more guards at what was another entrance of the palace offices. After an exhausting day walking around zoo in hot and humid weather trying many times to figure this out, i had to give up and fly back to SA, cacheless :-(

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When Noddy & self took on "Post Cards on the Rocks".

Our wives were questioned by the cops.

He wanted to know why we were wading through ice cold water in the middle of July, dress only in our underpants ?

"Were we intoxicated" were his words.

My better half had to do some fast talking to get us out of that one

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One episode from the Cache owner to tell.

 

Money Chest was placed after careful consideration in the parking ground at Coinworld in Midrand. First Monday thereafter back in office a snotty mail from j.greengrass, he has been napped by security on Friday afternoon just retrieving the cache and the cache was confiscated by the head of security who expected me the collect it from him.

 

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh nooooooooo, what went wrong?

 

Phoned head of security and arranged to meet this Monday afternoon for collection, caches are precious.

 

Arriving at reception, waiting for about 10 minutes a 2.10 m tall bear of a man appeared, could hardly see the small cache in his hands. Just whispering, sorry I am the one placing this box full of cash in the parking lot of Coinworld he started laughing???????????

 

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh was this an opportunity for us to test all our security procedures he said laughing. Had this poor guy in our security offices for a whole hour interrogating what he is doing with a box full of cash. Had him cool off for another 30 minutes before calling the MD for the next level of our security procedures, felt really sorry for this poor guy.

 

I think two precious hours on a Friday afternoon can be spend better, ie finding at least 3 caches.

 

However went with the head of security around the parking lot looking for another suitable hiding place, but all too open. Placed the cache eventually outside the premises.

 

Next up was Team Corolla, also when looking for the cache were questioned by security, but this time as it was outside not much of a problem (I hope).

 

Decided to relocated the cache to Pretoria, next to the fence to the presidential residence, still active as “Money Chest 2”. No problems there with security, seems were our money is made is more important than?????

 

Hope Jonathan is reading the form and can provide his story, apologies again.

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While checking on one of my caches last week, I rounded a corner in the path, and saw a very interesting dog coming towards me. On second glance, it turned out to be a very large baboon. With no where to hide, my Argentinian friends and me cowered as much as we could on the side of the path, hoping the baboon would just walk past. However, it decided to sit and stare at us for a few minutes.

It then grabbed my bag and ripped it open and grabbed my lunch.

We took this chance to make a break for it, but 2 more came round the corner, and some darn fierce baboon screams echoes down from further up the path. We decided to try and beat a hasty retreat (with the image of that poor boy and his stomache ripped out fresh in our minds). As we were jumping through the bush and over rocks, the Alpha male came storming out of the bush at top speed, and we had a bit of a tug of war for my backback - he was going through it searching for food, and I was also going through it, trying to salvage my keys and wallet and travel bugs!

He got some more food, and another baboon started at the backpack of my friend - he managed to find a big stick and managed to scare them off for a while so we could run the 20 min back to the car.

One of the baboons trailed us 5m behind all the way, with us chucking rocks to keep it at bay every now and then.

All in all, a darn scary experience, but a great story to tell ;)

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One of the baboons trailed us 5m behind all the way, with us chucking rocks to keep it at bay every now and then.

 

Woooooaaaah D-Bob that is one scary story. I once took a 3 day hike in the Duiwelskloof area and on day two we had a troupe mirroring our walk for about 1 hour parallel to our trail. We kept a watchful eye on them, but after an hour lost sight of them and could only hear their barks. About 15 minutes later they fell into our trail about 10m behind us. With 10km of hiking to go and with heavy backpacks on, we were debating at one stage whether we should abandon our packs, or at least the meagre hiking grub to get some distance between us. They followed us for almost 2 hours, but thankfully kept their distance.

 

Needless to say, we clubbed the hipflask in the tent that evening. A Baboon is one scary animal....and those living near humans are used to us and certainly not afraid to approach one.

 

As for caching, thankfully nothing too scary.

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