RV Winter Rambling 2006-07

Treasure Hunting
Life is simple in our roaming home. Housework is completed in no time and the sunny days beckon us outdoors to our favourite pastime. ‘Geocaching’ is rather like going on a scavenger hunt. Thousands maybe millions of geocachers have hidden caches all over the world and listed their coordinates (longitude and latitude) online at http://www.geocaching.com. With the assistance of a handheld GPS, we search for the containers, which may be a camouflaged Altoids tin, a Tupperware container, a bucket or a huge cabinet. The cache will usually contain miscellaneous little items such as key chains, tiny toys or a myriad of other bits and pieces. The expectation is that if you take something out, you replace it with something else and that you log in to the little book they’ve left. Then when you get home, you log your find or your inability to find on the Geocaching website. Some days, we only have time to look for one or two but there’s nothing better than when we devote the whole day to the pursuit. There are many times that we get strange looks as we scrabble around in drains and road barriers and bushes and sometimes right beside a busy highway. One such cache took us into a patio garden of a lovely restaurant and the coordinates were at a large metal sculpture of a mariachi band. We had our hands up the legs, into the instruments, through the holes in their necks, around their feet and all this with an audience of patio diners and a row of colourful and raucous parrots. A young Latino man in a service uniform sauntered by and commented, “It’s very nice, isn’t it? – My cousin made it you know”. He didn’t ask why we were frisking the metal musicians and didn’t seem to think it strange. So we asked him if he’d seen any others there searching. “No, amigos – is there money here?”. He answered excitedly. I don’t’ know if it was because we were uncomfortably aware of the spectators, but we didn’t find the cache – I think we’ll go back for lunch there and look again – it had a great menu. Another cache location gave us a huge laugh when we found a set of grinning dentures on top of a post – not part of the cache. We giggled over the thought of the gummy person wondering where he’d (can’t imagine they belonged to a woman) lost his teeth. But the most amazing cache we’ve found so far in Yuma is a huge steel cabinet at the side of a busy gas station. It had a combination lock on it but we had the numbers and after a few tries, we got into the treasure chest. It was loaded with items – and also contained about seven ‘Travel Bugs’. They are usually small numbered metal rectangles which have a written proposed destination and if you can further its purpose, you take it and leave it at another cache while logging its movement online.

posted by O'Leary @ 9:13 AM