GoSA Grapevine December 2020

Read about the PE Games, see what to do when unwanted substances are left in a cache and find out more about the next BIG South African Event!

From the Desk of the Chairman

It’s been an interesting year and to many of us, geocaching has proven to be a great escape. As we come out of lockdown and need to maintain safe protocols, even events are few and far between. However, it has been an exciting year for geocaching in South Africa. We’ve been given the opportunity to push our Mega to next year and the organising committee has been incredibly hard at work behind the scenes to give us something to look forward to. Be sure to log your will attends if you’re going to be going.

Then there’s also the new Adventure Labs coming up as well as an extended opportunity to catch some new souvenirs. In short, while the rest of the world may be on fire, geocaching still offers an opportunity for joy and smiles. Our new GoSA team, off the strength of the teams before, is keen to keep that going and have some great projects planned for 2021…but we’d like your input too. As we all go off and enjoy a December break, we’d like to reflect on what GoSA is and means to the community, so I appeal to you, let us know:

What your view is regarding the role of GoSA
What you’d like to see from GoSA
How we can improve geocaching in South Africa

You can send us a mail with that and any geocaching stories or suggestions to and while you’re at it, you can check out our updated GoSA website which features lists of events, GeoArt, Lab Caches, Virtuals and a whole lot of other awesome things to get you in the geocaching spirit. The links to our social media are all there too (we’re even on Instagram now) so feel free to connect with and tag us, #GeocachingSouthAfrica.

Wishing you an incredible holiday season full of yellow smiley faces. Safe travels for those heading away. We can’t wait to hear the stories of your geocaching adventures.

Welcoming New Cachers

We all know how exciting it is to find your first cache! Historically though a lot of newbie cachers find a few caches and then give up – sometimes because they don’t know any other cachers in the area, sometimes because they have no idea what they are looking for on trickier hides and sometimes because they have no idea how to tackle a puzzle cache or multi.

We would like to try and change this and grow the number of active cachers in South Africa. To do this we are encouraging all cachers in South Africa to reach out to newbie cachers, introduce yourself and welcome them to the game. One of the easiest ways to do this is when you see a new caching handle logging a find on a cache you own, drop them a message via the app or an email.

Howard and Wynona Crouch (Waco & Winnie) have been doing this on the KZN South Coast and Howard had this to say: “Hi, fellow cachers just a thought when you see new cachers in your area, drop them a friendly note or email welcoming them to geocaching and offer them advice. I sometimes go as far as meeting them at one of the caches.”

Please remember that if you are offering some advice, do this in a positive way! We’ve all been newbies at one point or another.

Dagga Attribute

No, we’re not getting a Dagga Cache attribute!

We’ve noticed three isolated incidents of cachers placing cannabis in some caches as tradables and possibly attempting to play an internal trading game. The GoSA committee had a discussion on this and our primary concern is that teams who cache as a family, particularly with children, may be put off should this become a trend.

The geocaching guidelines are clear that consumable items may not be placed in caches so even to those who may support such an initiative might find difficulty promoting it. Of course, we understand that many people do not read all the Ts and Cs of the game and may believe that their game within a game is just some fun but we’d like to address this lest it become a greater issue.

Of course, if HQ gave us a Dagga Attribute, we may be able to start a conversation on how to work around this but that doesn’t seem to be something in the stars anytime soon.

To this end, we’d like to request that cache owners who may have noted a log to the effect that cannabis, or any other consumable, has been placed in the cache inform the relevant user that such conduct goes against the Groundspeak geocaching guidelines. With the few who we have reached out to, they seemed to have understood and reacted appropriately. Should it become a regular issue, please inform the GoSA committee via that we may address it.

Thanks for keeping geocaching a cool activity safe for all to enjoy.

Podcast Reviewer Interview

Over the last few months Geocaching HQ has been interviewing the community volunteer reviewers. These podcasts have been remarkably interesting to listen to and the last “Reviewer Talk”, part 5, features none other than our own South African reviewer, Bruce Pantland!

Get comfortable, head on over to the Blog page, click on the play button and take a listen to the interview!

The Bay Cache Bash is on the horizon!

The year 2020 was a difficult one for Geocaching. Cachers were setting goals for themselves, lining up the caches they wanted to search for, planning holidays to find far off caches and most importantly, pencilling The Bay Cache Bash 2020 into their diaries. And then Covid19 hit us. We couldn’t even get out of our houses for 5 weeks so any form of geocaching was off the cards unless you had an essential worker permit and could find a quick one en route to work. Then HQ asked all potential “big events” to be put on ice and rescheduled for 2021. This meant The Bay Cache Bash organising committee had to cotton ball the event and postpone it by a year.

The Geocaching community has been asking the question, “Will the PE guys still give it a go?” Of course we will. The Bay Cache Bash 2021 (GC91CJE) has been published and the planning is getting back on track again. The main event will take place in Port Elizabeth on Saturday 25 September 2021. It’s at the start of the school holiday and also a long weekend with the 24^th being a public holiday, so why not make a geocaching holiday of it? We are planning a whole program for the week before and after so there will be more than enough opportunities to hit the caches in and around the Friendly City.

The most important thing to do right now is to log you Will Attend as soon as possible as the first goal is to get to 300 Will Attends which will allow us to apply for Mega status. Once we get that we will be able to get a lot of incredibly special things in place for the event that can only be linked to a Mega. Once you have logged your will attend, you will also be able to receive Announcement Notifications from the organising team as things fall in place.

A website to place all the relevant information on is being set up and information will also be distributed via social media channels like Facebook. Join the Geocaching Eastern Cape group to get any new info first or visit the website

We will also update everybody on The Bay Cache Bash news every month in the GoSA Newsletter.

Please log your Will Attend today at GC91CJE The Bay Cache Bash

If you have any enquiries you can send them via email to –

Thank you Jonker Fourie (FireflyAfrica) for keeping us up to date – we look forward to seeing what PE has in store for us!

Cache of the Month Winner: November

There was a time when Virtual Caches were few and far apart with only odd ones scattered around the major centres. Then HQ surprised everybody with an extremely limited first batch of Virtual Caches and followed that up mid-2019 with the second batch of only 4000 Virtuals being allocated worldwide. This meant that Geocachers who received them had the opportunity to showcase locations that wouldn't necessarily be suited for a physical container. It was these series 2.0 virtuals that we celebrated in November.

The November Cache of the Month goes to Letaba's Elephants (GC88Z80). After a close race between this Kruger Park virtual and two others in Cape Town and Durban respectively, this virtual at the Letaba Elephant Hall placed by Bouts777 took the honours. With 10 FP from 30 finds it's a popular one with finders and shows off Kruger's "Magnificent Seven", elephants that each had tusks that weighed in at over 50 kilograms.

Cache of the Month: December

In the past the only way you could add a Lab Cache find to your tally was by attending a Mega, so it was great news when HQ decided to allocate Adventure Lab Caches to qualifying Geocachers. This also gave cachers the opportunity to showcase a place, attraction, or route to fellow cachers.

Our December Cache of the Month is all about Adventure Lab Caches. Tell us which of the Adventure Labs you have done was your favourite and why? Did it take you to a beautiful location, teach you more about a destination or were you amazed about something you never knew?

Please send your cache of the month nominations for the Best Adventure Lab Cache to by 24 December 2020.

2020 Port Elizabeth & J-Bay Caching Challenge

Thank you to Graham Chrich (plainoldgraham) for sending through this article on the upcoming Port Elizabeth Games – it sounds like a lot of fun will be had by all!

The PE and J-Bay cachers are at it again! Christmas in PE is a very interesting time. Family and friends from up country flock to impose on their relatives at the seaside, and what a beautiful seaside it is too. PE and Jeffries Bay have some of the best beaches in the eastern cape, with crystal clear water and miles and miles of fine white sand beaches.

It however becomes a problem for the visiting friends and relatives of the local (very active) geocaching community, because, almost daily from the 6th to the 19th December, their cell phones ping continuously. Over this period the PEG caching Challenge will be in full swing and cell phones will be pinging at the most awkward and unusual times of the day or night. Cachers will be rushing off in mid-sentence, or in the middle of the braai the host takes off, grabs his bag at the front door, and zooms out the driveway without even saying a word to the guests. Why? He is after the FTF for one of the many caches that has just gone live.

The challenge starts from the time the first challenge cache bearing the Prefix “PEG 2020” is published until 17th January 2021, where after the “PEG 2020” prefix will be removed and the cache will just become one of our over 1700 cool caches in the area.

Over this 2-week period more than 80 caches would have gone live, all placed by the participants of the game. Each participant would have placed 3 caches. These will not just be pill bottles behind road signs but will be quality, very interesting caches.

Here is how it works:
Each participating cacher (there will be about 30), will place 3 caches. 2 traditionals and 1 multi or night cache, or 1 traditional, 1 multi and 1night cache. These will be published randomly at any time the reviewer chooses during the 2nd and 3rd week of December. I can already see Bruce gleefully rubbing his hands together at the prospect of sending 30 cars in one direction and then the next as everyone rushes for the FTF’s (these score higher than a normal find, and there are no joint FTF’s)

The active area stretches from the Cape St Francis lighthouse in the west, to the municipal boundary of Colchester in the east, It includes the towns of Dispatch and Uitenhage, so it is quite a large area with so many lovely nooks and crannies to conjure up the most wicked containers and hiding places. There are some basic rules regarding placement of caches.

The scoring is quite simple with 6 points for an FTF and 5 points for a regular find. 7 points for a Multi or night FTF. 6 points for a regular find of a multi or night cache. If a nonparticipating cacher gets an FTF, then the participants can only score for a regular find.

There are various cool prizes available! 1st prize goes to the cacher with the highest score. There will also be prizes for the cacher who’s caches were found least and prizes for the cacher who’s cache was found last (or not at all).

The caches are available to any geocacher countrywide, so if you are in our area over the Christmas period, we would love you to join the crazy PE and J-Bay caching frenzy!

Current Souvenirs

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.