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Visiting Somerset West


AntarcticMan

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Hi there - I'll be in Somerset West and the Garden Route for a fortnight, starting 9th Jan. Can anyone recommend some good caches to look out for please?

 

I'm wondering if anyone has Mapsource City Select for SA and might be willing to load up CT area to my Etrex Vista....? Can't afford to buy it for just a short visit!

 

Cheers,

 

Richard

(Ex Jo'burg - From a wintry Cambridge,UK)

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Hey antarctic man

 

Here are some of my favorite caches in the cape town area, in no particular order.(even if some of them are my own :D

 

1 - Crystal pools (gordons bay)

2 - sentinel view (cape town)

3 - crows nest porthole (cape town)

4 - Danger Bay - out past hermanus

5 - Finebush 2 (cape town)

6 - eagles nest - (cape town)

7 - Postcard on the rocks (cape town)

8 - Blood sweat and sandy Bay (cape town)

9 - Paradise revisited (cape town)

 

Other realy nice ones to do, seeing as you are based in someset west

1 - coffee shop crawl (franshoek)

2 - winelands - (stellenbosch)

3 - view from the top (sir lowrys pass)

4 - kleinmond, Lemoen kop (on the way to hermanus)

5 - Caledon wild flower (caledon) - Hemel en aarde is pretty close to this too

6 - wind farm is pretty cool (past stellenbosch)

7 - Jonkershoek is ruddy close to somerset west, so you might as well do that. cache a bit ruined though.

 

Have fun. Let me know if you have any more questions

 

Cheers

Discombob

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Many thanks Discombob - I''ll be looking out for those. I've got a list of caches in GSAK now and have also ordered the VEZA cd's from the CSIR which I hope will have arrived at my ma-in-laws by the time we arrive. At least they are a bit cheaper than Garmin City Select.... (GBP150 here!)

 

I've often found that its the geocaching that 'makes' the holiday - getting you to places you wouldn't otherwise see, so I have great hopes for the Cape!

:rolleyes:

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I think you can create routes in VEZA and upload those. Definitely don't bother with Mapsource maps for SA. They're pretty mediocre in coverage, only really cover the major centres. Just checked the garden route area, and it really only has the major roads and the odd side street. The package is expensive and does not compare to the Europe version which has just about every jeep track loaded.

 

On the upside, there is a local company that has been granted a license by Garmin, and they should be shipping a new version this year, which promises to have every little track loaded and autoroutable....can't wait.

 

Bottom line, don't bother trying to load up the city select.... it may help you in Somerset West and Cape Town, but beyond that..... just get a good atlas that has coord info on it.

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Thanks folks.

 

GSAK is worth a look if you're a premium member, as you can import pocket searches.

 

eg: I was able to ask for a list of 500 caches within 500kms of Cape Town which I then imported into GSAK.

 

So I now have all the waypoints and all the crib-notes in my lap-top to take with me. I've also used GSAK to export all the waypoints into mapsource so I can see them on the map. Makes it very easy to see which caches are close to a chosen route for example.

 

You can also put the crib-notes into a cheap Palm 3 or similar (cost next to nothing on Ebay) and do so-called 'paperless caching' although I've found using it to look stuff up in the field a bit tedius on such a slow machine... But more practical than carrying 500 'cheat sheets' around of course!

 

As it happens I found a friend who was able to loan me his copy of City Select which I now have in the laptop and the GPS. I see what you mean about its limitations, but still nice to have - wouldn't want to pay that price though, even if I was still living in SA!

 

Can't wait to get there and get caching! I know at least two of the sites so won't need my GPS - but some of them look quite challenging to say the least!

 

I've done most of my caching in and around the Fens here in East Anglia - not too many mountains in these parts - I think one of the local caches is only a metre or so above sea-level - and its 100km from the sea!

 

:blink:

 

Cheers!

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