|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
 This month in the Grapevine - Cross border caching, Chairman’s Challenge and more...
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
From the Desk of the ChairmanY’know, we all have our own ways of geocaching and little achievements that mean so much to us despite the clueless bewilderment offered by our muggle loved ones when we speak of such achievements. I was supposed to meet up with my best friend in Welkom and he couldn’t understand why I was two hours late. If I had told any of you that I had just completed the Antron’s Puzzle Box series, you’d probably understand. In fact, you’d probably cheer me. My muggle mate however…I had to buy him a gourmet waffle and beg for forgiveness. I’ve seen some exceptional puzzle boxes around South Africa. Antron’s second even made HQ’s geocache of the week back in 2013. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Community Contributions
Finally, most of the Covid restrictions had been lifted, border crossings become much easier with no more hassle of timing a PCR test to arrive at the border posts on time, so we decided it was time to go on our usual camping tour through Namibia after a pause of nearly 3 years! Self-driving and camping are a paradise in Namibia! Not only do you have the roads mostly to yourself (90% of them mostly good gravel or sand conditions), but there are only vast open spaces and desert in all shapes and forms, and you can enjoy this astonishing beauty mostly undisturbed from human noise or distraction. Except for Damaraland north of Khorixas as well as the far North (north of Etosha and Tsumeb where the veterinary fences are and the diseases for cattle and humans have historically been undesirable - foot and mouth, malaria, etc.), the land belongs to farmers (or is a National Park or Conservancy) and 99% of it will be fenced and you hardly see a soul on the roads or next to them. We have found over the years that the nicest and best-kept campsites are those on private farms - often with private ablutions, many very creative outdoors, incorporated beautifully into trees or rocks and always with generous distance to other campers; some have power, most have water, and all have braai facilities on site. The additional benefit is that you meet the locals, get information on the area and what activities there are on their land (hiking, 4x4 etc.) and often you can also buy meat from their farm, be it from beef or game. Camping costs anywhere between N$150 and 300 pp these days, whereas the cost on national parks’ sites has been drastically increased for non-Namibians in April 2022. Our mode of traveling to Namibia has always been to just go where we felt and stay where it was nice - no planning, no reservations. Tourism hadn’t as yet fully picked up and we were very lucky with good to excellent road conditions most of the way. So, working off our camping gear list and with Tracks4Africa maps and GPS installed, we loaded our trusted 2006 Toyota 4x4 Hilux kitted with rooftop tent, onboard fridge/freezer and were ready to go… And off we went! Being a relatively newbie to geocaching (but after being a muggle assistant for a few years - do you actually realize how many caches the muggle finds in such a duo?!?), I was secretly hoping to be able to retrieve a few caches on the trip. My husband, being a convinced muggle, is slowly but surely moving from “stupid hobby” attitude via “oh well, might as well” to helping hand. Interestingly and sometimes embarrassingly, he sometimes is the one to find the trickier caches and has proven more patience and persistence at times when already I have given up… Just briefly before setting off I had finally managed to get to grips with downloading cache lists for offline use, which of course came in very handy as mobile phone reception in Namibia is more than sketchy, even with a local SIM card (which one can buy at nearly every shop and petrol station, just like top-up vouchers). Already on our way up north via Beauford West and gravel roads to Upington (with good input on road conditions as we progressed by recent cache logs of team iPajero!) I managed to find a few nice roadside caches that got us nicely into the hunting mood! We so enjoyed the Augrabies Falls National Park the next day that we decided to spend a night and explore the park more (and do the caches while here). Once we crossed the border at Ariamsvlei (with printed vaccination cert and after paying road fund fees, N$330) we were on our way in Namibia.  The Route and the Caches We slowly moved from South to North, then via Caprivi Strip and Botswana (Okavango Panhandle, Delta, Maun) back to Namibia and out the South (campsites in brackets): Beginning at Fish River Canyon (Cañon Roadhouse), we travelled to the area of Aus with its fascinating Wild Horses - a relic of the German ‘Schutztruppe’ (Tiras Guestfarm) and on to the Tiras Mountains on the beautiful D707 with its red dunes (Koiimas Farm).  From there north to Sesriem (Neuhof Campsite) to hike to Deadvlei and some of the legendary red dunes and to see the water that was in Sossusvlei again for the first time in over 10 years after the heavy rains earlier in the year! Next on to the Namib-Naukluft area (Tsauchab River Camp / Oerwald Camp) and via Spreetshoogte Pass into the Khomas Highland (Farm Weener near Gamsberg), on past Kuiseb Canyon (usually grey and desolate - this year full of grass!) to Bloedkoppie/Rock Arch/Tinkas (NWR Campsite at Bloedkoppie). After three weeks we arrived in Swakopmund.So far, we had camped alone everywhere and had lots of hiking opportunities. The caches along our route were mostly simple roadside caches (OPOR…) and mostly un-muggled - surely being the second-least populated country on the planet and no foot-traffic on the roads helps in this respect!  We spent two nights in a self-catering flat in Swakopmund, replenishing stock, doing laundry and wallowing in German delicacies all over town (from Café Anton’s pastries to pork knuckle, Sauerkraut and Weissbier at the Brauhaus), some necessary spare part purchases and some sightseeing beside doing all caches (incl. three nice adventure labs that took us around town)! And again, I came across South African caching heavyweight iPajero who had adopted an EarthCache at the Kristallgallerie - what a nice surprise!From here we set off to the Erongo Mountains - our most favorite area in the country. No caches here for me (but I did place a few - see below), we then proceeded to Damaraland/ Twyfelfontein area (Madisa Camp, Aabadi Mountain Camp) with some more nice roadside caches, some with a bit of climbing involved as well as a couple more interesting EarthCaches. Thanks to a befriended archeologist who recently had cartographed and researched newly discovered rock engraving and rock painting sites in the area, instead of visiting Twyfelfonteijn we managed to discover our “own” rock engravings and paintings, which was a rewarding experience!  On to Etosha (Taleni Etosha Village) entering at the Western Gate. Sadly, very run-down facilities in the park. Very interesting EarthCaches again helped understand the area better than ever before - even muggle husband had to admit!From here we decided to travel into the Caprivi Strip and spent time on the Okavango River (Taranga Safari Lodge) and further east in the Kwando River region with wild and less visited Mudumu and Mamili National Parks (Mavunje Camp). Self-driving those parks as well as enjoying a boat cruise to Horseshoe Bend from our camp with big herds of elephants at the shore as well as plenty of hippos and birdlife was one of the highlights of this trip! Now it was time to cross into Botswana and we did so via Mahango National Park at the Mahombo border post and spent a night on the Okavango Panhandle (Drotzky’s Cabins) before driving south on horribly potholed roads to Maun for a safari we had booked into the Delta. Luckily there was an EarthCache I could do in Maun, so I had the chance to earn another country souvenir in Botswana too! Our way home the next week lead us back into Namibia (we prefer the scenery and roads over Botswana) and down the Eastern side of the country over endless red dunes and through ancient riverbeds (Nossob, Auob) for nearly two days of traveling. Until we reached Nordoewer/Vioolsdrift border post there was only one lonely cache enroute. We headed on south via Springbok (a few caches along the N7 and through the Winelands were very welcome…) to home within another day’s traveling. Altogether on our 9730 km trip I found 82 caches (not too bad considering I had set off with a count of only 201), 14 of which EarthCaches, one of which in Botswana! I don’t think my caching caused much delay in our travels, but they surely spiced up the trip tremendously and lead us to some interesting sites and learning about the country’s natural wonders! The most memorable caches found were definitely (and all for location more than anything): Ghosts of Time hidden in one of the iconic 500+year old, dead leadwood trees in Deadvlei (definitely my hottest cache to date, found after 30 min hiking at over 40C!), Rock Arch and 4Cassie for location and effort and Welwitschia Wonder for taking us to the most amazing Welwitschia plant, all of the last three in the Namib-Naukluft Park, as well as most of the EarthCaches. Next time we travel to Namibia I will make sure to bring more log sheets and replacement containers. In a desolate area like this with so few caches altogether (my list contained around 250 for the whole country but may not have been complete), it is the caching community, not the CO, that makes the effort to maintain caches and it seems to work quite well (there is a good take-away here also for our caching practice in South Africa, I find!!) The few containers and sheets I had with me all went into occasional maintenance too. Cache placements enroute As we were progressing with our tour, I came to understand that most caches were placed by oversees tourists and most cachers are also tourists. Where Namibians had placed them, they hardly ever could live anywhere within a radius of maybe 300km, so the idea came up to maybe increase my CO count by placing a cache of my own (or two, or three?!) despite of course not living anywhere near the cache locations for potential future maintenance myself.  It all started at the beautiful Cañon Roadhouse near Fish River Canyon, in week one of our trip. The place is unique in that it boasts a large collection of dysfunctional old-timers both inside and outside which are beautiful to explore, are unlikely to ever be moved and make for fabulous photo opportunities.The idea suddenly popped up that this would be the perfect place for a lab cache, and since I had just been awarded another one, just before dinner on the last day I set out to collect the necessary information and photographs, writing it all up in the adventure lab builder over a sundowner drink at the bar and before dinner was served the cache was live, the establishment’s manager enthusiastic about it and a very cool new adventure lab cache added to the map! (Steampunk by the Cañon) The bonus (mystery) cache, although a physical container requiring maintenance at some point, was approved after 2 weeks without problem and soon after the (FTF) was claimed!  The next one came to life after a quite trying climb on top of remote Bloedkoppie east of Swakopmund in the Namib Naukluft Park - a beautiful red whaleback granite mountain very reminiscent of Paarl Rock in the Cape Winelands or Moon Rock in Augrabies National Park (Climb that Koppie!).At Ameib Ranch in the South-West of the Erongo Mountains it was time for some traditional caches to bring this place with its most amazing rock and boulder landscape onto the geocaching map (Bull’s Party and Ameib), as well as an EarthCache at Phillip’s Cave, which was the most prominent rock painting site in the country before the White Lady was discovered in the Brandberg nearby (Phillip’s Cave).
 The last traditional cache placed was inside Namibia’s best kept secret, Mudumu National Park in the Caprivi Strip, some 30 km south of Kongola on the Kwando River (Mudumu). All of these caches are still available for (FTF) -hunters to date and I am curious to see when they will be found and by whom!
And so, our trip was all around successful and next time we travel there I will be sure to take plenty containers, bags, and log sheets to replace occasional lost caches and possibly hide a few more to add to the game in this country that can be so much better represented on the geocaching map! If you decide to travel there, please also take material for maintenance and keep the game alive! In the meantime, I hope you will come to Knysna and find some of our many new caches we placed around town, the coast, and the forest between roadrunred and myself to showcase our lovely town’s attractions and natural beauty! |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Because sometimes, for some people, it is about the numbers… Here is a summary of the South African Geocaching activity for May:
1,252 Cachers found a total of 5,286 caches during May. 37 Cachers placed 70 new caches during May. The number of Cachers who found at least 1 SA cache in the previous 12 months is 7,398. The number of Cachers who placed at least 1 SA cache in the previous 12 months is 192. The total number of active South African caches at the end of May is 16,385. Top Dogs  |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Congratulations to the winners for the June 2022 Quiz from Capri Cache Store! If you don't enter, you don't have a chance. If you have entered and have not been lucky as yet, keep trying! You can enter every month, as long as you only submit one entry for the month. Each month, 3 lucky winners will be drawn from the hat.
10 entries were entered into the June Quiz, all entries were regular quizzers. Please chat to your geo friends and encourage them to enter this Quiz. It costs nothing to enter and it is fun too! The winners for June, are as follows: First Draw: IngetjieZA - Inge Neumann Second Draw: Eagle Eyed - Marius Oosthuizen Third Draw: Firefly Africa - Jonker Fourie Capri Cache Store will be in touch with each of you to get your prize delivered. I'll be catching up on all prizes in the next week. My apologies for the delay! Look out for next month's Quiz and try your luck! ANSWERS TO JUNE'S QUIZ: 1.What is the GC code of the oldest, active geocache in the world? GC30 2.South Africa ranks in the top 20 of the oldest, active geocaches by country. True or False? True 3.What does TOTT stand for? Tools Of The Trade 4.How old is Project-GC this year? 10 5.What are the handles (geocaching names) of the two statisticians on the GoSA Newsletter? Adevnture_T and Danie Viljoen  We look forward to receiving your entries for the July Quiz! Please follow all the steps below to participate and please encourage any of your geocaching friends who are not on the GoSA Grapevine mailing list to sign up so that they too can enter the competition.
Please use the following link to subscribe: https://www.geocachingsa.com/ |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
 They are your local go-to people, so keep their details for future reference
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
Found an awesome cache? Have some tips to share? Been on a cool geocaching adventure lately? Exciting events happening in your geocaching community? Taken a great photo? We would love to hear all about it! 
