We all know that geocaching is about the numbers and the statistics as much as it is about the finds, isn't it?  We asked our own South African stats guru, Danie Viljoen, to share some of his recent analysis with us.

It is one thing to know that South Africa currently has 14117 caches and say Egypt has 286. But how do they really compare if one takes their cache densities into account? The following map shows the cache density for the whole continent (and surrounding islands) with a 5km resolution:

The real stars here are South Africa (at this resolution the highest density in Africa is in Port Elizabeth) and a number of the islands: primarily the Canary Islands and Madeira.

There can be little doubt that family Behrens is doing something special with their hides – they own 6 of the current top 10 caches in South Africa!

For more interesting statistics about South African and African caches, visit the page on the Groundspeak Forums called Statistics - bend it anyway you like!

The 2017 Annual Cache In Trash Out Weeks are scheduled for April 22 - April 30 and September 23 - October 1. Watch our site for a list of CITO events as they get published. Isn't one near you yet? Consider hosting one then!

Geocaching International Film Festival is returning for another year of epic geocaching moments captured on camera. Films need to be submitted to Geocaching HQ by August 1, 2017. Find out more.

 

The weekend of 24 to 26 February saw event GC6XE7Y, the 3rd annual NMB Caching weekend away, organised by PumTim and KitchenBoss. This year the event was held at the inniKloof camp site in the Gamtoos Valley.

Once again this event was well supported with teams arriving from Cape Town, the Garden Route and East London to complement a number of more local teams from NMB and its surrounds.

Approximately 40 new caches were placed in the area with a wide variety of cache types. As has become the norm at this event, it was possible to grab eight icons over the weekend.

Cachers started arriving early with iPajero, Strandlopers w&e and k j being some of the first to park their vans and put up their tents. Most of the rest arrived on Friday afternoon with some Cape Town teams arriving late after a full day’s caching en-route to inniKloof.

The main task for Saturday was to tackle the long walk to the inniKloof Waterfall cache (GC6BNN3). A good 7km (14km round trip) walk up a mountain, along the ridge and then down an almost vertical descent to a magnificent waterfall. Luckily the weather played along and we had a cool overcast day during a week that had seen temperatures in the upper 30’s.

On arrival we were faced with a D4.5 container hidden by plainoldgraham, but that was only second priority as the first priority was to swim in the cool water and admire the magnificent waterfall. The fit people found it as they left almost at the same time as the not so fit arrived at the waterfall. The group really got spread out. Farm owner John acted as a magnificent guide on the trail and made sure everyone got there and back safely. The walk is well worth your while with some magnificent scenery along the trail. The waterfall at the end is the cherry on the top.

While most of the group sweated their way to the waterfall some teams decided to rather cache locally. The Capetonians drove through to Port Elizabeth to grab as many caches as they could.

Both Friday and Saturday evening saw a huge fire being made in the communal fire pit and lots of caching stories were told over a few beers and glasses of wine. In fact, the few glasses of wine might have been the cause of the serenading of some of the chalets late on Saturday evening (or was it Sunday morning?).

Congratulations to the organisers. Another successful one. Looking forward to next year!


Article submitted by ChrisDen