Costa Rica Caching

[+theprospectors]

Hope this is on topic.

 

We are planning a trip to Costa Rica and hope to use our Garmin ETrex Legend GPS Unit to help us navigate and do some geocaching. Does anyone have any experience with Mapsource maps for that area - are they worth getting?

 

I assume satellite coverage is fine there but what about reception in the cloud forests etc.

 

Thanks for any info.

 

The Prospectors

[+Z_Statman]

You will love it there - country as well as the people. I was there a couple of years ago, before started caching. Went to Guatemala during Nov of 2004 and as I suspect you will find, maps are hard to find but as I recall CR was better.

 

I forgot to mention. Even though you might not find a map for your GPSr the compass still works and your coordinates are viable.

Edited January 5, 2005 by Z_Statman

[+Smitherington]

I was down there last summer with my Garmin Emap and my Garmin Etrex Legend. Both had Mapsource World Map loaded. Did not help much. I bought a paper map before I went down but was not impressed with that either. I was not driving and the people who were driving us around were very familiar with the roads.

 

Unfortunately, I was unable to do any geocaching while I was there. In one case we were up near Volcan Arenal but the park closed in mid afternoon so we cound not get in that day. I wanted to do one in San Jose but time constraints kept me from doing that. I was down on a Missions trip helping a missionary and the caching was something I wanted to do but it did not work out. Maybe next time.

 

I hope you are able to do some caching there.

[+Sputnik 57]

This is a bit of a challenge. I'm not surea about MapSource map. For maps on a laptop, one source is LandSat7 satellite images. You can get these by downloading NASA's World Wind software. World Wind gives you USGS photo and topo maps too, but not for Costa Rica. The LandSat7 photo maps, visible and enhanced, are pretty amazing. You need to have a pretty stout Internet connection to download the software (253MB) and the images.

 

Next option would be my alma matter, the University of Texas's Perry-Castañeda Library map collection. Another option is UC Berkeley's EART pages.

[+Sagefox]

We visited Costa Rica during Christmas 2003 for about 10 days. Having the gpsr along was fun even though we did not have maps. It was fun to track the airline route to see what countries we were over (the eMap has a base map of the world) and where we were on the ground. We were near only three caches during our several hundered mile drive and two of them were likely missing. I was able to log 10 locationless caches though. There are great opportunities easily available for locationless caching.

[+JohnnyVegas]

You are not going to have much luck finding deteiled maps of Costa Rica that you can load into a GPS, You will also have trouble find paper topo maps, I don't think they are made, For most countries in the world you can not get paper topo maps because of the cost in producing them.

[+theprospectors]

Thanks for all the replies. Here is what I have in mind---

 

I realize that I will not be able to obtain detailed maps to download into the Garmin. The Mapsource 'Worldmap' has major roads and towns on it so at least I will be able to tell if I'm on the right track. I have found a few sources for waypoints in Costa Rica - Bike clubs seem to be into GPS down there. So I'll use the basemap to just keep me going in the right direction.

 

As I understand it there are few signs on the roads so if I get off course I can use the tracking feature to get me back to where I belong.

 

I have found a source for topo's of Costa Rica. Omni mapping sells 1:200,000 and 1:50,000 maps. Some have relatively recent updates i.e. 1988 and 1993. I've ordered a couple just to see how they look.

 

Hopefully between the two I can have some fun with my navigation and get to find a couple of the caches there.

 

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

 

The Prospectors

 

"Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads!" Dr. Emmett Brown

Edited January 7, 2005 by theprospectors

[+Jamie Z]

I've got an EasyGPS .loc file of some waypoints I made in Costa Rica. I can't recall exactly what they all are. Mostly landmarks around San Jose to help me around the city.

 

Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure all the km markers on the trail up Cerro Chirripo are marked too, if you plan to hike it.

 

I'll send it to you if interested.

 

Jamie

Edited January 7, 2005 by Jamie Z