Which country is this cache in?

[+Dread_Pirate_Bruce]

I recently visited the Caribbean island of Curacao, which is a Dutch territory. Now, I need to decide how to list it in my list of places I've cached. Do I list it as "Curacao" or "Holland"?

 

When I cached in the Hawaiian Islands, I listed it as "USA". I want to be consistent, but I'm not sure claiming a find in Holland is legitimate.

 

I know that it is my list and I can do whatever I wish. Nonetheless, I'd like to know how others would treat the matter.

[+Panda Inc]

That's an interesting question HH242. If you had found a cache in Puerto Rico (a U.S. territory) would you say it was a U.S. or Puerto Rican find? Personally, I'd call it Puerto Rico ... or Curacao. Better yet, if I were in your shoes I'd be planning a trip to Holland.

 

Cheers,

P and A

[+redsox_mark]

Well Groundspeak lists Curacao as a separate country, so that is how it will show on your official stats.

 

It has it's own parliament and prime minister. It is a country which is part of the "Kingdom of the Netherlands" It makes most of it's own laws, though some things revert back to the Kingdom.

 

I would count it as Curacao.

[+terratin]

For the reason that redsox mentioned. And certainly not as Holland as North Holland and South Holland are provinced within the Netherlands.

[Pup Patrol]

I recently visited the Caribbean island of Curacao, which is a Dutch territory. Now, I need to decide how to list it in my list of places I've cached. Do I list it as "Curacao" or "Holland"?

 

When I cached in the Hawaiian Islands, I listed it as "USA". I want to be consistent, but I'm not sure claiming a find in Holland is legitimate.

 

I know that it is my list and I can do whatever I wish. Nonetheless, I'd like to know how others would treat the matter.

 

Curacao is listed as a separate country in the Groundspeak search:

 

https://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?country_id=54&as=1&ex=0&cFilter=9a79e6ce-3344-409c-bbe9-496530baf758&children=n

 

 

B.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Pup Patrol

[+Walts Hunting]

What does it say on the caches webpage? That would seem the logical choice since that is where it would be mapped and credited as country found.

 

I am not sure why you keep a separate list of locations. That is on your profile stats page and a number of sites will produce nice mapsshowing that

[+narcissa]

Well, Holland isn't a country, so it certainly isn't that.

[+Dirkverschuren]

Here you see Curaçao is a country

 

Kijk 'Holland vs the Netherlands' op YouTube - Holland vs the Netherlands:

 

It's like canada is no UK.

 

Gr Dirk

From the Netherlands.

[+narcissa]

Here you see Curaçao is a country

 

Kijk 'Holland vs the Netherlands' op YouTube - Holland vs the Netherlands:

 

It's like canada is no UK.

 

Gr Dirk

From the Netherlands.

 

It's more like how Ontario is in Canada, but is not the entirety of Canada.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Here you see Curaçao is a country

 

Kijk 'Holland vs the Netherlands' op YouTube - Holland vs the Netherlands:

 

It's like canada is no UK.

 

Gr Dirk

From the Netherlands.

 

It's more like how Ontario is in Canada, but is not the entirety of Canada.

 

It's a bit more complicated than that. Curacao is one of several countries that was created when Netherland Antilles dissolved in 2010. The geocaching country designation is confusing for many of the caches in that area. There are caches placed in 2008 that are listed as Curacao and it looks like most, if not all caches on the island are now listed as Curacao. If you look at nearby Bonaire, which was also one of the former Netherland Antilles islands older caches are still listed as in Netherland Antilles but newer caches are in Bonaire. It gets real confusing when you look at St. Martin and Sint Maarten. Caches located in the Sint Maarten portion of the island are listed as Netherland Antilles but those in the northern part are listed as St. Martin and GS doesn't even recognize Sint Maarten as a country. It's more similar to Scotland and Wales listed as part of the UK but are still called countries (even though they are not officially recognized as distinct countries but the U.N. and don't have official ISO country codes).

[+fizzymagic]

The Netherlands Antilles, of which Curacao is a part, was dissolved in 2010.

 

From the relevant Wikipedia page:

 

he Netherlands Antilles was dissolved on 10 October 2010.[3] Curaçao and Sint Maarten became distinct constituent countries alongside Aruba which had become a distinct constituent country in 1986

 

Therefore there is no issue here; Curacao is a country in its own right.

 

Now, to me the greater issue is this: is Curacao a part of South America? It lies on the continental shelf just off Venezuela. I claim it should count as part of South America.

[+SwineFlew]

GS is always behind in these things.

[+narcissa]

Here you see Curaçao is a country

 

Kijk 'Holland vs the Netherlands' op YouTube - Holland vs the Netherlands:

 

It's like canada is no UK.

 

Gr Dirk

From the Netherlands.

 

It's more like how Ontario is in Canada, but is not the entirety of Canada.

 

It's a bit more complicated than that. Curacao is one of several countries that was created when Netherland Antilles dissolved in 2010. The geocaching country designation is confusing for many of the caches in that area. There are caches placed in 2008 that are listed as Curacao and it looks like most, if not all caches on the island are now listed as Curacao. If you look at nearby Bonaire, which was also one of the former Netherland Antilles islands older caches are still listed as in Netherland Antilles but newer caches are in Bonaire. It gets real confusing when you look at St. Martin and Sint Maarten. Caches located in the Sint Maarten portion of the island are listed as Netherland Antilles but those in the northern part are listed as St. Martin and GS doesn't even recognize Sint Maarten as a country. It's more similar to Scotland and Wales listed as part of the UK but are still called countries (even though they are not officially recognized as distinct countries but the U.N. and don't have official ISO country codes).

 

Yeah, my comment was about Holland/Netherlands, not Curacao.

[GCEdo]

For my personal list I use countries from ISO 3166-1 encoding list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1#Current_codes

 

Note that this list contains not only sovereign states (or countries) but also dependent territories (e.g. Curacao or Puerto Rico) and special areas of geographical interest (e.g. Antarctica).

 

Curacao is listed there and I would list Curacao on my personal list.

 

Bonaire, for example, is not listed separately, but as Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba.

Edited April 4, 2015 by GCEdo

[+NYPaddleCacher]

The Netherlands Antilles, of which Curacao is a part, was dissolved in 2010.

 

From the relevant Wikipedia page:

 

he Netherlands Antilles was dissolved on 10 October 2010.[3] Curaçao and Sint Maarten became distinct constituent countries alongside Aruba which had become a distinct constituent country in 1986

 

Therefore there is no issue here; Curacao is a country in its own right.

 

Now, to me the greater issue is this: is Curacao a part of South America? It lies on the continental shelf just off Venezuela. I claim it should count as part of South America.

 

Curacao, like all the other Caribbean islands and central america are neither part of North or South America. I checked when I found some caches to Costa Rica to see if it qualified as the fifth continent on which I'd found a cache.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

For my personal list I use countries from ISO 3166-1 encoding list:

http://en.wikipedia....1#Current_codes

 

Note that this list contains not only sovereign states (or countries) but also dependent territories (e.g. Curacao or Puerto Rico) and special areas of geographical interest (e.g. Antarctica).

 

Curacao is listed there and I would list Curacao on my personal list.

 

Bonaire, for example, is not listed separately, but as Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba.

 

It would probably make more sense for GS to use the ISO-3166-1 list but the list of countries/territories is based off of the U.N. geopolitical ontology.

 

I've seen a couple of people write that they use a "personal list" but, for geocaching I think it just makes sense to use the official GS list even if it has a few flaws.