+frogrock Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 This will be my first time geocaching outside of North America. I have a Garmin Montana and will be traveling to the Canary Island, Gibralta, Spain and Rome. Do I need to purchase maps of these areas for my GPS or can I just download the geocaches? Quote Link to comment
+The Leprechauns Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 (edited) I can't imagine geocaching in a foreign land without maps to guide me. I have made two "bucket list" trips the past two years -- the first to Turkey, Israel and Jordan, and then a trip down the Australian Coast from Brisbane to Sydney and back. To prevent a tech disaster from ruining my trip, I downloaded maps and caches to both my Garmin GPS and my iPhone, and double-checked everything before I left. If I lost my GPS, I had the phone, and vice versa. I kept the phone in Airplane mode the entire time, in order to avoid roaming charges. Both trips went great! With free, autorouteable maps available for the entire world from openstreetmaps for Garmins, why would anyone not travel with maps? Edited April 20, 2017 by The Leprechauns Quote Link to comment
+colleda Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 We've cached in Turkey, Mexico and Central America using an Etrex 20 without maps. We loaded all the caches for each country onto the GPS before leaving. The base map was good enough for our needs as we weren't driving but on organised tours and just fired up the GPS when we had a spare moment or two to see what was nearby. Quote Link to comment
+on4bam Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 Download OSM maps, they are free and are excellent (at least in all places we've visited). Of course you can get by without maps too, my old GPS12XL didn't have maps and it got us everywhere, we only had to find roads/paths ourselves. Quote Link to comment
+MartyBartfast Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 With free, autorouteable maps available for the entire world from openstreetmaps for Garmins, why would anyone not travel with maps? I have used these maps for the Canaries, and other islands in the Mediterranean and they are excellent. As well as using them for caching I've used the automotive navigation on my Etrex30 as a "sat-nav" which also works very well. Quote Link to comment
+NYPaddleCacher Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 We've cached in Turkey, Mexico and Central America using an Etrex 20 without maps. We loaded all the caches for each country onto the GPS before leaving. The base map was good enough for our needs as we weren't driving but on organised tours and just fired up the GPS when we had a spare moment or two to see what was nearby. There are a lot of places where one can easily with just the base maps. With its narrow streets, one could definitely benefit from detailed maps as it's fairly easy to get on the wrong street. I"m also a bit advocate for the OSM maps for Garmin. I have used them on four continents and they've worked quite well for me. Quote Link to comment
+eigengott Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 This will be my first time geocaching outside of North America. I have a Garmin Montana and will be traveling to the Canary Island, Gibralta, Spain and Rome. Do I need to purchase maps of these areas for my GPS or can I just download the geocaches? In my experience, for the Canary Islands you can use OpenStreetMap based maps generated for Garmin devices, for example the Open MTB maps. The coverage is very good, even small trails are on it. Gibraltar, Spain and Italy are of similar quality, though there will be larger "info gaps" in rural areas seldom visited by tourists. Enjoy your trip! Quote Link to comment
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