Agoraphobia, Achluophobia, Nyctophobia, Scotophobia and most accurately Lygophobia are the words that come to mind while trying to describe the feeling that I had when a group of four of us entered a dark room and had the door shut on us as part of our Escape Room adventure in Johannesburg.
 
I actually did not have a fear of being trapped in a dark place. I knew that I could get out at any time just by calling through the walkie talkie (if I could find the person in our group who was responsible for it.) The reality is that we chose to put ourselves into a position where we had the need to escape, rather than having a fear of being trapped.  To me, that is an important distinction.
 
What I did fear was being late. I know the complex very well where the escape rooms are hosted, but I ended up walking over a kilometre circumnavigating the building. When I found a discreet sign pointing up a corridor and realised that I was completing my rectangular circle, I decided that it made sense to ask the nearby security guard where to go, who smiled and said that I was in the right place. Normally, getting trapped is something easy to do and hard to escape. I signed the visitors form, for once agreeing that it’s a good idea to write down my number, and in the event of a fire in the building somebody could call me on my phone to see if I was OK or trapped inside.
 
There were some rules to follow – we should not try to dismantle power sockets on the wall, move the fixtures, nor try to crack the locks painted red (these locks are used to reset the puzzles in the room for the next crowd.) We were also given a walkie talkie, and each of us was offered a battery powered torch. No mobile phones were allowed in the room and my thoughts drifted back to the concern about the minor risk of a fire in the building.
 
There was a back story to the Room we were entering – our friend Bob, the Alchemist, had called one of us and left a very unhelpful message that people were after him. We had gone to his property to speak to him and ended up getting locked into a room. And, yes, plunged into darkness. 
 
As a team of four, we have all known each other for a minimum of 7 years, so there was no need to find our feet and learn how each of us operate under pressure. All four of us love solving puzzles, even though I’m the one who most actively seeks out puzzles to solve, and the escape room was like a puzzle heaven for all of us.  It was great teamwork. In fact it was such good teamwork that I found myself not doing much solving, but rather standing and pointing with my flashlight (It had this very rhythmic flashing, at about 3 flashes every 2 seconds, and I wondered many times why nobody told me to turn it off.)  When somebody said something like “I need the purple hat” I had it in my hand in a second and passed it to them.  I put myself into the role of gopher, willingly, as everybody was busy all the time. Once or twice, I thought that I could see what was required and I handed some item to somebody without even saying why, and they pieced together the clues for that puzzle immediately, calling out instructions for somebody else to follow.
 
We escaped the room within the allotted time. I don’t know how to measure whether our time was good or not, but I do feel that we maximised our time together while still achieving our goal of escaping before the hour was up. We were congratulated with a genuine smile by the lady who had kept watch over us.    
 
The Escape Room experience is one that any puzzle-solving geocacher would enjoy. 
 
article submitted by Fier

This month's Cache of the Month theme revolved around the best Wherigo. They are one of the rarest cache types out there with just over 50 in the country today. Coincidentally, this month's COTM winner is the oldest active Wherigo in the country. We are proud to announce Irish Quest, GC1V8KT as September's COTM. Go and uncover the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

October's COTM will be for the Best Earthcache as on 12 and 13 October International Earthcache Weekend is celebrated. Send us your nominations for the most awesome EC you've found by emailing us at .