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Using a US Garmin in the Caribbean


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I am making a trip to the Dominican Republic and have an iPhone and a Garmin Nuvi.

Since I don't believe I can use my phone I was wondering if I can use my Garmin for geocaching using the "Where am I feature" to geocache while I am there. Arethe only requirements for GPS's be able to access a satellite signal? Thanks for any help in advance.

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A global positioning system receiver will function anywhere it can see the GPS satellites at least well enough to determine its location.

 

The amount of detail you'll have on any built-in maps, however, is variable. For a car-based unit like the nuvi, best to set it to "off road" mode if it has one.

Edited by dakboy
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Actually your phone should work there but data is expensive. I have a Sprint USB air card and racked up a few $100’s in data charges with it last year in Santo Domingo. Lucky for me it was a company card. What you can do is buy a SIM card in Dominican and buy phone cards similar to Tracfone in the US. You will have to trim it with scissors to fit your iPhone. Example, I’m in Bangladesh now. Verizon charges $2.89/minute for voice and a whopping $20.48/MB for data. I was loaned (can’t buy because of government control) a local SIM and paying $.13/minute for calls back to the US. Pretty sweet deal!

Edited by Cacheoholic
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Or here for maps of almost anywhere. Openstreetmap

 

On a recent Danube rivercruise I used maps from this site downloaded to my Oregon 550 for walking around Budapest, Vienna and Prague. Put in my own geocache file and another for restaurants. Found the Kolkovna restaurant in Prague (Old Town) at night under a cloudy sky - worth the effort.

 

Get your Caribbean geocache queries from geocaching.com. The Nuvi will accept both the map and geocaches but there is a caveat. I have a Nuvi 1350 it will only process 1 additional map. I have about 8 maps on the micro-sd but only 1 (extra) in use at any one time.

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Have you looked to see if there are any active caches in the area of Dominican you plan to visit? Over 50% of the few caches in Santo Domingo were missing in action when I was there. It is a very poor country and people look everywhere for food so the caches are hard to stay hidden. It might not even be worth worrying about geocaching.

 

Also, you can run a pocket query and save the caches and map tiles within the iphone geocaching app. before you leave. Just turn off your cell service when you are there.

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What am I doing wrong? I have not had my nuvi long. I have downloaded maps from openstreet maps and the La Hispanola Foro (as well as a couple others) and put them on an SD card as well as on the nuvi, but when I go to simulator mode and look at the map settings, only maps from the US and the maps I successfully downloaded and used in Costa Rico are options. I would appreciate some advice, thanks!

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