Aladar123 plays geocaching

A great dinner and some walk and geocaching, that is what keeps your jet lag far away... At least that is what I was hoping for, but the truth is that none of them helped me on this trip. To look at the brighter side I put many nice smiling faces on the map of Taiwan. The one below was in a park with a train in the middle. As this week on many of the days it was raining that evening as well, but I'm happy to report it is possible to find this geocache even in dark and rain. I think the rain helped some as no muggles were brave enough to hang out in the park in the rain. The train, cannot go far The hint is clear on this geocache, but you need to know a few movies, animation films to understand. One of them was trivial, but the other I had no clue, as the hint was referring to between the two poles, it limited the search area to two smaller part. The geocahce after I signed it. The cache hold in place by a magnet. After a few geocache finds I had the feeling

As an animal lover it is always fun to find a geocache that has anything to do with animals. This one was floating in the water just like many other ducks in the area. A duck just hanging out there. I saw the same ducks available in a discount store in Germany, and I also decided next time I stop by and they still have one I'll get one or two for myself as well. I hide in an area where there is a river so this would do a great hide there. I was thinking a lot where to put the container in a duck, and this is a great idea, just a hole on the top and the container plugged in there with some sealing. I have a slightly different idea on how I will do, but later on that. See the hole on the back of the duck, that is where the container was hiding. As this duck was part of a trail we really enjoyed the whole trail, no two same hiding way seen on the eight geocaches on the trail. I have to say I always respect the cache owners who put such effort into hiding a trail with all

This is not the first and I hope not the last of this kind of geocaches I found out there. All you need is a good old tree with a hole where your container fits easy and won't hang out, a small piece of branch, preferrably same tree to match the colors and texture. Connect the two and plug it in, there you go. Pulled out a bit for better view. As you can see this hide was not that difficult as the cache owner did not use the same type of wood to camouflage the hide. We were going all around the tree for a few minutes before I spotted this one, and we were in three. For the size I added my small pen to the picture, so you see it is no bigger than a nano vial. I also like using the plastic vials but mostly in urban areas, as this tree was standing by itself on the field it does not take much to suspect the cache is on the tree, but just imagine it was in a forest with bad GPS signal... ok don't even imagine, that would be a sneaky, evil hide. This is how we found

Every country has its different quick to find cache type. In the Netherlands it is mostly the carpool caches. If you are on the way to some place and you want to get a quick hit, or just need some fun for the day you need to pull off the highways and find a carpool, most of them has a cache.  The hide at a carpool in the bicycle storage. What makes the carpool caches easy is mostly the fact that outside the peak hours there is no muggle at the locations, only some cars and bicycles parking, so you can search relaxed. The only problem you might run into if a car is parking on top of the geocache which we had ones, but lucky enough for us it was me parking on the cache. This find was not the easiest at first look, we searched all around the coordinates, tried to avoid what some dog left behind. The hint in Dutch even for a native speaker was not pointing at anything at all. After a few minutes we decided no other way but touching everything looking into any holes, rainpipes, un

While out in a forest I like to take pictures of mushrooms. This time it was the geocahce, really visible, out in plain sight, but not from the path the muggles are walking on. Are they real? or not? Nice realistic ceramic mushroom nicely standing and hiding the geocache container under it. Some nettle already started to grow around it, I can only guess but from the end of the spring till the end of autumn there must be a lot more growing in the area and must be harder to get to it. Some good news to anyone visiting this cache is that on that day we walked this whole trail we meat 2 more geocachers doing the same trail, and we all saw a few logged same day before us, so there will be a nice pathway cut to the cache. This cahce was a part of a trail with seven caches and a bonus which you got the coordinates from the previous seven. This was the first we found. From a distance it is nicely visible as well. I'd like to mention that this first hide from the serie was in

The happy last day of my trip in Taiwan. Finally I get home to see my family, the only flight that was available takes off later in the evening so I had to spend some time, the trivial solution was to go geocaching. I decided to get to an area where within walking distance I have a chance to find more. This was one of them. Hiding behind the light. Some magnets are holding this container in place, the fun was that I should say lots of magnets, usually a single one is efficient, but looks like this CO had either many magnets extra or want to make it compatible with small kids hanging on it. Here is the container closer. The light hiding the container in the back, easy to reach, easy to spot. It is so easy to spot, in some countries this would go missing regularly for sure, but seems to be in place for a while now here. At the time I write this blog post my neck is already in pain. I got sunburnt, it was so strong, I could feel it burning, but had nothing to prot

Close to the 101 in Taipei, Taiwan After a few days and some geocaches (really not many, but I took pictures of all of them...), I had to learn a few things of Taiwan. One of them that the muggles here does not care much about anything, they are there, but they do not even look at you while you are searching, they do not look curious at all, so here is the story of this one. After dinner and a night market and a few kilometers walking around towards the 101, I kept on checking if there are any caches close by to make a detour. 101 Finally this one showed up to be on the route, so let's go. It was raining, started to get heavy as well, which later stopped us from going after another one. So while waiting at red light to cross the street I read the details, the hint, getting ready for the search. It said it'll be at the biggest bicycle rental place, great, I started to worry, biggest usually mean crowded. There were enough for rent for sure. ... as we walked cl

In urban areas it is not always easy to find places that are easy to place a geocache at. Or if it is easy it is hard to get to it due to too many muggles in the area, or can be found only during day or only during night time. The all-in-one picture. This cache is located in Taipei City, Taiwan really close to a very crowded shopping area where all the younger generation visit for all brands that are trendy for them, and anything else they might need, or not. The dancing lion. The dancing lion is just across from the shopping area, but as in some cases the coordinates were not too accurate, so we started searching on the wrong side of the place. I was even thinking why did they put it there and in the hint even referring to the dancing lion, while there is no dancing lion at all. Then we started to widen the search and found that there is one on the other side of that small square. Hm, at first look it did not even remind me to a lion at all, but when we went closer it

The importance of a hint is really high, especially for beginners, they could make the decision between someone becomes a geocacher or stops playing after the first few searches. (Here I on purpose say searches and not finds.) The story in short The last few days are sometimes rainy, sometimes dry but the most important it is not cold or windy. Work was good on track so we decided to go out for a lunch and not order food. After a good lunch I asked my hosts how about walking down to the Keelung river as it is only a few steps away and I never had a chance to see it before. They did not need much convincing, and I quickly looked up that there is a geocache within quick reach. A fast reading checking the hint, the last few logs difficulty terrain combination is low, so should be an easy pick. We walked to the area, while I took a few pictures. Weather was not the best but at least no rain. A bird feeding in the grass. Same birds made lots of noise on neighboring trees.

Thanks to my work I have a chance to visit different countries far away. This helps with my geocaching statistics a lot, adding new countries, increasing distances, etc. I'm still in Taiwan when I pull this blog together and second day I had a chance to go out after work and visited many places, used the public transport instead of taxis which is always more fun. The geocache and its surrounding After a quick visit to one of the night market with my local tour guide I asked her how about a geocache for today, and of course did not need to convince at all (maybe one day she'll start playing as she enjoys the game). So I open up the app on my phone, let's see, oh closest is only a km away, let's go, this is when you come across all different scenarios, how to cross a street with twelve lanes as an example, not sure they were supposed to be so many, but the locals used it more like that. So this cache is next to a temple call Jiantan Fu Zheng Temple. See some pict