For a long time South Africa was just one huge single region on the geocaching.com web site. That all changed around May 2008. Groundspeak added all 9 provinces as a cache placement selection, and the geocaching community, new and seasoned geocachers, all rallied together and added provinces to all their existing geocache descriptions. More than ninety percent of all geocaches were updated within 4 or 5 days.
If memory serves us correctly the reviewers at the time were able to go into the archived geocaches and update those provinces.
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In 2006 it was almost unheard of that a team had more than 1 000 finds. In 2010 quite a few teams had broken the 2 000 barrier.
As at April 2018 only 30 South African teams had broken the 4 000 geocache mark. There is one South African team, team "iPajero", who went through the 17 000 mark in 2017. Four South African teams have more than 7 000 finds, being "The Huskies", "quiddle", "Geelvink" and "rodnjoan".
You can see the most prolific South African geocachers at PROJECT-GC
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The start of Geocaching in South Africa:
The very first geocache in South Africa was hidden on the 14th January 2001, 8 months after the 1st geocache in America, and was hidden by team 'GPSFrodo'. The geocache was called 'GCZA01' (GC163) and was the 163rd cache worldwide.This cache was only found once by team 'Jors'. From their log:
Quite a feeling of acomplishment came over me as I saw the stash where it was hidden, the walk was well worth it!...I really enjoyed this, and will hide my own one of these other hot! days. Lets keep this fun thing going!!
It took team 'Jors' another 9 years and 3 months to make good on their promise and placed a cache called 'GCZA01.2' (GC1RNAY) very close to the original first cache as a way to commemorate the first South African placement.Team 'Jors' also has the very first South African swag item, a watch, as a Travel bug, which can be discovered at certain events.
The 2nd geocache hidden was 'Sentinel View' (GC185) and hidden on the 18th January 2001, only 4 days after the first one, and was hidden by 'Prof Charles Merry'. The geocache, or stash as it was known at the time, was first found by team 'netic' on the 3rd of February 2001. From their log:
After a 40 minute hike we found the cache about 5 meters off the gps spot.It turned out to be a spectacular view and well worth the walk.
This geocache is still active and still contains the original log book. It is currently the oldest geocache in South Africa. The geocachers of Cape Town organised a 10 year anniversary celebration on the 10th of January 2011. A video of the event can be seen here on YouTube.
The uptake of Geocaching in South Africa:
Geocaching was slow in taking off with team 'Peter Scholtz' and team 'Chris Smith' (now known as Chrisbloem) planting most of the geocaches around the South African landscape in the first 2 years.
In the 1st year (being 2001) only 72 geocaches were hidden.The 2nd year saw 84 added and in 2003 there were a total of 250 hidden.At the beginning of 2005 there were a total of 343 hidden, and then geocaching started taking off as at the end of 2005 there were a total of 703 hidden, almost doubling the cache count.
The perspectives of early geocachers were very different to those starting out now and here are a few examples:
On the forum (here) Brick stated this in January 2008:"...In Mpumalanga Snowwolf placed a few, and those days 4 caches in an area justified a trip there."
Peter Scholtz's perspective on the game of geocaching here is a very interesting read.
Geocaches hidden over 2002-2018:
Cache count hidden per province:
*Note: This is the hidden count at the end of each two year period. This is NOT the same as the active (to be found) count.
Do you remember that tomorrow is International Geocaching Day? Earn the official International Geocaching Day 2019 souvenir by logging a geocache or attending an event on 17 August 2019. We trust you will have a great time celebrating this occasion!
Left: GPSFrodo Right: How the geocaching website looked back in the beginning of 2001, when GCZA01 was placed. Also viewable here.
Can you tell us a little about how you heard about geocaching?
My introduction to GPS ‘games’ started with the Degree Confluence project. After logging a confluence in KZN I saw a post on usenet (yes we still used that in those days ;)) about a Stash that Dave Ulmer in the USA had placed, and published coordinates for. This sounded like an awesome idea and thus my introduction to geocaching began.
We see your first intro into GPS games was with the Degree Confluence project. Can you tell us a bit about this?
The Degree confluence Project was started in 1996 by Alex Jarrett. The idea behind the project is to document all the confluences accessible on land. A confluence is an intersection of a longitude and latitude, and for the purposes of the project, only integer confluences are considered. Below is a map I created in early 2001 to show the confluences:
You can find a lot more detail on the project page for South Africa here.
What was your first gps?
My first GPS was a Garmin Etrex. It was the original, ugly, yellow model that couldn’t load maps or do any routing. It still used a serial port connection then. See this for the older model comparisons.
What made you plant GCZA01 where you did?
If I knew then what I know now …. You know the old saying. At the time of placing GCZA01, there were no real rules. My main reason for placing it on a friend’s farm was that I could get permission to place it. I contacted the botanical gardens in Pretoria first to see if I could place a cache there. Well, you try to explain this “Treasure Hunt” game with GPSs to an administrative type … and yeah, you guessed the answer. Since the 1st geocache in the States was placed on private property, I thought I’d do the same.
Can you describe the cache container and it’s hiding spot? Was there any significance to the things you added to the cache?
The cache container was a regular Tupperware plastic box. It contained some CDRs, a novel, log book and pen, greetings letter (which I’m sorry I didn’t copy) and wrist watch. The watch was the only significant item. I worked for a Danish software company at the time (Navision Software) and they had a company branded watch, which I bought specifically to place in the cache. The reason for its inclusion was that I was pretty sure it was unique in the country and there wouldn’t be 2 like it ;) As far as I know Jors still has it.
Yes, Jors kept it and made it into a trackable!
There was no reviewing process, no rules. You logged the hide and that was that.
We see you have reactivated your geocaching account and found a couple of geocaches this year. How did you get back into the game?
A friend of mine owns a motorcycle accessories shop in Centurion. While there I saw he had a handheld GPS on the shelf that mentioned geocaching on the box. Easy sell for him ;).
Did you ever think that the game would develop to what it has become – a game with over 3 million geocaches worldwide with many different cache types and geocaches suited to every type of cacher?
That question actually has 2 very different answers.
Do you have geocaches on a bucket list that you’d like to do one day?
I would love to visit GCGV0P and and GC30.
We are always on the lookout for photos from events or cool caches, as well as any fun, interesting, unusual or exciting geocaching stories to share with the geocaching community. If you want to share yours, send it to us by emailing it to our webmasters.
The Mega 2016 organisers published their event, GC5YRDE Cape Town 2016 in October last year. It is happening at the Wild Fig in Mowbray on the 1st and 2nd October 2016. Help the event organisers achieve Mega status by logging your "Will Attend". They have just passed the 500 mark, so hopefully we do have enough geocachers to earn the Mega status. For the latest news and updates about this exciting event, like their SA Geocaching Events Facebook group or visit www.capetown2016.co.za for more information and to download the full program.
GoSA has decided to update our look. After much internal debate, we ended up with a logo that we believe does represent both Geocaching and South Africa. We hope you like it, and will be using this on all our digital media going foward. We have also realised that we need our own Facebook page. Although there is a South African Facebook group, and many regional groups on Facebook, as well as other forums like the Groundspeak forums, these are just being used to communicate between geocachers. We have decided to create a GoSA Facebook page to increase general awareness of GoSA and our website, to promote geocaching in South Africa, and to improve communication within the geocaching community. Please visit our page to stay in touch, at www.facebook.com/geocachersofsouthafrica/
Africa and South Africa have had a few reviewers over time.
The first reviewer was erik88l-r (Eric van Dyk from the USA - who is one of the original global reviewers who has been reviewing continuously since 2001) and is an American geocacher who reviewed caches for the African continent. He was often supported by another long time international reviewer – Crow-T-Robot.
Eric came out to South Africa in December 2007 and met the various geocachers in each region on his visit.
Team "Fish Eagle" then took over the role of reviewing caches from March 2008 till February 2011, and gave over the reins to team "ROTSIP" who was soon joined by team "PTE Curb". For a short time team "Ingwe9” also reviewed South African caches.
Another two South African expats are also involved in reviewing – team "Xanthe Terra", based in the UK after relocating from Abu Dhabi, who looks after the Middle East and assists in North Africa, and team "protea sangomas" is a reviewer for Norway.
All EarthCaches were originally reviewed by the Geological Society of America (GSA), but due to team "Carbon Hunter" placing so many earth caches on the African continent, and being in the same line of work, he was offered the position to review earth caches for the Africa and Middle East area. He used the reviewers team name of "geoawareAFR”, and has since taken up the role as a non-EarthCache Reviewer using the name “Africa Rocks".
If you speak to some of the seasoned geocachers you will find out geocaching was quite different in the early days. With only 500 to 700 geocaches available at the end of 2004, some teams would take a drive to another province when two new geocaches were published (find link in forum). If a cache was planted in a park, that was the only cache in that park (and sometimes even in the suburb).
These days it is not uncommon to see 4 or 5 geocaches in the same park if the park is big enough.
In the early days it was mostly 'geeks' and people in the geological industry, who had access to GPS receivers, who played the game. Over time GPS receiver technology has become a lot cheaper and more accessible to the general population. "Paperless caching" was a big term around 2008 as a lot of geocachers would print out the geocache page and then go geocaching. Hints were also manually decoded on the printed out page to find out what the hint was. With the technology becoming more accessible, and put into smartphone the "old" way of geocaching is gone. The numbers in the "old", pre 2008, days was a lot *bigger* then they are today.
For the history of the South African geocoins, the coins are divided into 2 groups. The first group is coins commissioned by South African geocachers, and the 2nd group are all other "South African" themed geocoins.
South African commissioned geocoinsThe very first geocoin minted by a South African was the geocacher_coza coin minted by team "geocacher_coza", from Vereeniging, in 2005. This was a non-trackable coin but did have a sequential sequence number on each coin. It is estimated that a total of 500 were minted.
Team "Fish Eagle" produced a "Fish Eagle" coin in 2006 which was the first trackable geocoin, and was produced in the Netherlands.
It seems like 2007 was the South African geocoin year as 4 coins were minted by 3 separate teams. Team "NotBlonde" created what is now known as the "South African Big 5" geocoin, and team "CrystalFairy" created two coins. The "Adrenalin" geocoin (first run of 250 coins) and the once-off limited edition "CrystalFairy" gold coin produced with the permission of Selena Fenich the designer. Only 250 of these coins were made. Team "The Huskies" from Cape Town, also produced a paw print coin in 2007.
In 2008, team "Eragon Saphira" produced the very first South African, designed and minted, geocoin at the Gold Reef City mint. Up to the end of 2014, this is still the only "in South Africa" minted coin. As the facilities at the GRC mint are limited the coin is not as nice as the other coins minted overseas.
2 Years later, 2010 saw the 2nd run of team "Fish Eagle" coins, as well as team "The Huskies" Soccer World Cup coin.
2011 was the 10 year anniversary of geocaching in South Africa. Team "Cape Doc" designed a lovely South Africa shaped coin with a spinning "zero", in 4 different finishes which was another first for South Africa. The finishes were: Satin Gold, Antique Silver, Antique Gold, and Antique Copper. Team "Urban Campers" closed 2011 with a 50 coin run of a round blue coin bearing their team name.
The only coins created in 2012 was for South Africa's first MEGA event held at the Voortrekker monument in October 2012. There were 6 coins minted for the grand occasion with the following finishes: Antique Silver, Antique Gold, Satin Silver (a limited edition), Satin Gold (a limited edition), Shiny Silver (a limited edition) and Nickel Silver (a limited edition).
The next set of geocoins commissioned by South Africans was for Africa's 2nd MEGA event held in Kwazulu-Natal in 2014. 4 Coins were minted, 3 being of the same design, with 3 different finishes (Bronze, Silver and Gold), and a 4th Limited Edition coin with a separate design.
Other South African themed geocoins
In 2006 a geocaching team from the Netherlands (a team called "Myth") visited South Africa and produced the first non-South African commissioned geocoin. In 2007 Groundspeak followed suit and created a coin where Signal the Frog flew over South Africa in a balloon. In 2011 a South African flag micro coin was created. Late in 2011 Travel Bugs were starting to appear with different countries flags on them, and South Africa was one of them.
South African commissioned geocoins
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Tracking code on the back.World-wide coin.South African version of the coin hasflag colours on the front,and the green and gold colours of our sporting teams on the back.
Tracking code on the back.World-wide coin.South African version of the coinhas the sunset colours of a phototaken in the Kruger National Park.
Other South African non trackable (wooden) geocoins
If you have any additional coin info please contact us on or post a message on Facebook.
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