Geocaching in Mexico

[+remiquest]

I am going to be traveling to Mexico at the end of the month and would love to find a few cache's. Can someone explain what I will need to do to have my Garmin Oregon 400T ready? I will be heading to a town near Cozumel. I am going to try and search on gc.com to see if I can just make a pocket querry for the area, but I figured I'd start here and see if anyone had any knowledge in the area.

[NordicMan]

Yep get a pocket query set up, or maybe even a FEW pocket queries if you'll be traveling to various areas, and you should be good to go

[+ArmandoM]

This cache is in Playa del Carmen. I don't know how far that is from the town you are going to, but it's a start.

[+Corey]

How do I download geocaches into my Garmin Oregon?

Pocket Queries: A Detailed Explanation

[+Cacheoholic]

There aren’t a lot of caches down there (38 caches within 50 mile radius of Playa del Carmen) but don’t let that stop you.

[+kwvers!]

There aren’t a lot of caches down there (38 caches within 50 mile radius of Playa del Carmen) but don’t let that stop you.

 

Hi neighbors from San Diego

[bobmorton]

When will you go back in Mexico? I am also planning to go there, maybe you can share some of the best places to go... Thanks

 

 

Bob M.

semenax blog reader

[bobmorton]

When will you go back in Mexico? I am also planning to go there, maybe you can share some of the best places to go... Thanks

Edited November 4, 2010 by bobmorton

[bobmorton]

thanks again

Edited November 4, 2010 by bobmorton

[+Telehunter]

Check my list called "Merecen mi recomendación" They all deserve my recommendation.

[ddmid17]

hubby and I traveling to resort south of Playa de Carmen early May. Would love to geocache while there. Most posts I can't read - could someone...in English...help me out? appreciate it!

 

ddmid17

[christinecccc]

Thanks for this info.

 

Christine Bounds

Weimaraner Crate Training

[waterworld23]

I'm going to Mexico with my family. Do you have any up-to-date recommendations re geocaches? Things may have changed since before

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[+muddajay]

How could we get a souvenir for Mexico and Guatemala? Could I design one? Would love to have those for my Profile.

[+Viajero Perdido]

Dream on. The idea has been much-discussed on the GC forums, for example: http://forums.Ground...pic=308400&st=0

 

In short, no new country souvenirs are likely anytime soon. But souvenirs for random days of the calendar, of course! I can't explain the logic...

[+wldangel]

Totally not fair. What about the people that are trying to cache in different countries?

[+Mac_Leichlingen]

Hi,

 

we spend our holidays last year in Mexico an did some caches. We are wondering why there is no found in North America in the statistic? Where is Mexico? Is it on Atlantis?

Why is the there no found in North America?

[+Viajero Perdido]

Hi.

 

Mexico does show in the correct place on the world map, and your profile indeed shows you've found caches in Mexico. Which means North America, congrats, a new continent.

 

I've found caches in all three North American countries, but I can't find the phrase "North America" anywhere in my own profile. Groundspeak shows separate maps for Canada and USA because those countries have provinces / states that they can show broken-down statistics for, so they probably figured a separate map for North America as well would be overkill.

 

(Oh, and I know Mexico has states too, but I'm not sure Groundspeak knows about that detail. So I just have to keep track of the states myself. Nine and counting...)

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Totally not fair. What about the people that are trying to cache in different countries?

 

I feel your pain. I've found caches in 20 different countries and only have country souvenirs for 8 of them. Coincidentally, I've got a 5 hour layover in Mexico City on the way to Costa Rica the second week of August. That should be enough time to leave the airport, take a taxi to the central square and find a couple of caches, and be back in time for my connecting flight.

 

Since the OP mentions using a Garmin, I'd highly recommend using the free routable open street maps for Garmin.

http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

 

I have used them in many different countries and they work quite well

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Hi.

 

Mexico does show in the correct place on the world map, and your profile indeed shows you've found caches in Mexico. Which means North America, congrats, a new continent.

 

When I found a few caches in Costa Rica a couple of years ago I wondered if I had found a cache on a new continent as well (I am currently at four), but depending on where I looked, people considered PR to either be part of North America, or not part of a continent at all.

 

 

I've found caches in all three North American countries, but I can't find the phrase "North America" anywhere in my own profile. Groundspeak shows separate maps for Canada and USA because those countries have provinces / states that they can show broken-down statistics for, so they probably figured a separate map for North America as well would be overkill.

 

(Oh, and I know Mexico has states too, but I'm not sure Groundspeak knows about that detail. So I just have to keep track of the states myself. Nine and counting...)

 

Actually, Groundspeak does recognize Mexican states. Look at the Advanced Search page, select Mexico from the country list and it will dynamically populate the States/Province select list. The fact that it has a select list for Mexican states means that there is a unique identifier (the state ID for Distrito Federal is 462. There are quite a few other countries which have states/provinces with a a unique state ID, but Groundspeak isn't really using that data. For example, there isn't a country map of Mexico with the state boundaries. If there was, then they could easily highlight Mexican states where one has found a cache. Project-gc *does* make use of that data for many countries. Look at the Profile Stats page on project-gc and select the maps tab and you'll see a map of Mexico with state boundaries and the nine states in which you've found a cache highlighted.

 

 

[+Viajero Perdido]

Groundspeak may recognize Mexican states, but apparently they don't (or didn't) require that info when placing a hide. I glanced at some Mexican cache pages at semi-random, and see that while some of them are correctly identified by their state, some are simply "in Mexico".

 

It could be more trouble than they feel it's worth to clean that up, in order to provide accurate statistics.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Groundspeak may recognize Mexican states, but apparently they don't (or didn't) require that info when placing a hide. I glanced at some Mexican cache pages at semi-random, and see that while some of them are correctly identified by their state, some are simply "in Mexico".

 

It could be more trouble than they feel it's worth to clean that up, in order to provide accurate statistics.

 

A few years ago, if you looked at the Hide and Seek a cach page, and did a search by country, and selected the U.S. Canada, German, (and maybe the UK), it would redirect to the Advanced Search page, with that country selected, and the State/Province select list populated. For all other countries, it would go directly to a search results page. Then sometime 2-3 years ago they started to add State/Province data for other countries, and now searching "by Country" for some of the other larger or more populated countries (Australia, France, Germany, Italy...) would redirect to the advanced_search page. I think that over time, more and more countries have had state/province data added (Mexico, Sweden, Ireland...). You'd probably find that for many of these countries, caches placed before the data was added did not have the state/province designated (because the data wasn't available). Oddly enough, If you look at the listings for caches placed prior to 2011 in Mexico it won't show the State. However, for some countries (e.g. Italy, Sweden) even the oldest caches have the state/province information.

 

It would be fairly easy to automate a fix but it would also be easy to get "wrong". You can reverse geocode lat/long coordinates to get Country and State/Province data as it exists now, but that might not be the same thing as what it was when the cache was placed. See caches in Netherland Antilles/St. Martin/Sint Maartan too how confusing it can get.