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Thoughts and rants


ariwa

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Having being shoved on a plane to Sydney for some training for work provided me an excellent chance to do some caching over here in my limited spare time.

 

Just have to say - wow - I'm sorry - but the caches at least in Sydney are pretty spectacular both in terms of choice of location (we pride ourselves on having such a beautiful country but compared to some places over here, it's pretty bland!), and even cache containers, multicaches and puzzles. As a result I had hoped to find a lot more initially than I actually have due to the extra time it's taken trying to think outside the square to find them!

 

These caches have given me some awesome ideas to try back home next time I make my next cache!

 

Steve

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Interesting to hear that. We ran into EcoTeam from Aus at a cache here in NZ and they made the comment that the clues for our caches were quite different to theirs. Ours gave the actual location, whereas theirs might lead them in the wrong direction, or be quite cryptic. Is this what you found, or was it just that the Aussies had better hiding places compared to caches that you have found here in New Zealand?

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I tend to agree with you Steve. Many of our caches are just too easy. I prefer puzzle type like 'Mission Impossible' (now really impossible due to it's been archived icon_frown.gif ), Gav's 'Spy x' series, and the excellent 'tricky' series by Gary Maree, Tim and Vida. Give me a multicache and make my gps do some work. icon_cool.gif

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I'm all for making cachers think a bit when looking for caches, unfortunately setting up caches like that takes much time and planning. I've got all these grand plans for caches I'd like to place, but just haven't had the time to set aside for it....

 

As for caches in NZ, some of them are pretty straight forward - these one's are generally urban caches. There are some about that take people to some pretty interesting spots.

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I think it is a good thing that we have a variety of caches - some easy, some hard; some urban, some miles from anywhere; some walkable, some climbable, some just hard to get to! Surely we want to encourage all types of people to join the fun and if all caches are of a really difficult or lengthy nature then we are limiting the catchment group. Personally I enjoy all types of caches but it is definitely good to have some urban caches being placed that you can pop out and do in a short time when you feel the need of a break from working all day and night! Alternatively being able to set up the opportunity to travel to new places and take on new challenges is just as great!

Let's keep the caches coming but let's keep them varied in style, location and difficulty.

 

Sallies

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Don't get me wrong..A number of their caches are similar to ours - somewhere in some bush, right at the location that is promised.

 

But the multicaches are very deceptive.. One I went on was where you went to WP1, added a date you read off a plaque to some more co-ordinates, and then you should have, according to the description, expected to find the cache at the new co-ordinates. Nope. What I found instead was a 35mm film canister under a tree with further instructions to solve a "cryptorithm", and the answer was the number of footsteps away from the tree the cache actually was. No bearings were given either! I spent 1/2 an hour sitting by the tree trying to solve the cryptorithm but couldn't (duh)

 

Then there's all the urban caches that they hide right near the starts of popular walking tracks, where about groups of people are constantly walking past - so you have to be quick, they call this a 'stealth cache', where you try to find the cache not looking suspicious, then grab it, take it elsewhere to fill in the logbook, then return it just as stealthily. They're nasty. The last one I went to was in Hyde Park, which is constantly busy all day. I triedfinding the cache after around 6pm when things died down but by then, the hidey hole they hid the cache in was too dark to see the cache. So I found it, only at 1pm when there were about 100 eyes affixed to me ("heh, don't worry guys, I'm just fixing this here light"). To top it all off the cache was so small it didn't have a pen in it, so I had to borrow someone's pen! icon_smile.gif

 

So there you go...

 

Steve

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Oh, as for hiding places.. I found caches inbetween cracks in buildings, under band rotundas, inside the hollow inbetween two main branches of a gumtree, inside a streetlamp, at the base of a sculpture in a busy park, in a bush beside a tomb in a graveyard....

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Hey M@, Re Spring Geometry - I just sat behind the tree and filled it in. I approached through the bush anyway so people weren't even aware I was there.. tho it was tempting to play the 'public annoyance' card and go spooking people by running around in the bushes :-)

 

Dwarf - no problems, I can only hope it induces us all to put some real crazyness into our caches :-)

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