This month in the Grapevine: AGM, Event Series and The End of the Wheel
From the Desk of the Chairman
Greetings from Welkom in the Free State. It's good to be back in South Africa and the trip has offered insight into what we can appreciate as cachers in the land of +27. There was a query on Facebook about how we feel about the decreasing numbers of finds from year to year and other seemingly negative looking statistics. While it's naturally tempting to look at statistics and think the game is in decay, I'll remind you of your grade 6 chemistry teacher who drilled "energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed from one form to another". That's what I've been noticing as caching ages.
While there have been fewer placements, most of the new ones seem to come with a great story, puzzle or even container. To complete the penultimate wheel challenge, I found a really awesome recently placed two stage letterbox and thought to myself, I'm so glad that we're doing more than easy traditionals. Naturally, when the caches require more effort, fewer people would be inclined to do them and that factors into the numbers.
If we look at the number of events increasing since lockdown, the new names on logs as well as the returning names, it's looking pretty promising. Beyond that, just the increased engagement has been inspiring. Months ago, an organization named GENUS reached out to us and after several meetings, we're in the closing process of a funded project to place a series of caches across the major museums in the country. More on that in the coming months.
For now, thank you for all your efforts and taking the time out to place and do awesome caches. I know you could be dedicating yourselves to your other hobbies (of which hiking is preferred by 60% of you according to last month's survey). There's much to look forward to as well as much to do. If you're keen on playing a part of it through our collaboration with GENUS or even within GoSA, please reach out.
Notice of GoSA AGM
The GoSA AGM will be held at 14h00 on Saturday 7 October 2023
All members of the community are invited to attend. Those wishing to attend and receive the relevant documentation, please mail us prior to 30 September and we'll send you a link to the virtual meeting.
Similarly, should you wish to add matters to the agenda, please reach out.
Sitting at the pub with some fellow Geocachers at an event for the Wheel of Challenges, Out and About Challenge, we were all discussing how best to tackle the next Challenge, Streaking Star.
We all had a look at the calendar and thought of ways to bring in new events that would “drum up” some interest and get us all out the house to do something enjoyable, a debatable topic when talking about traditional Scottish music.
I spotted two events on the Pipe Bands’ Association of South Africa’s calendar which I normally attend at this time of year, the St Benedict’s Regional Finals (15th July) and the Benoni Northern SA Champs (29th July), both of which normally come with the flair of a market and beer tent. Needing no excuse to don the kilt, I setup two quick events just outside the main event to keep within the guidelines and hoped that the attendees would pop into the actual Band event.
Not to my surprise all who attended the Geo Events did indeed pop into the pipe band event and hung around as long as possible enjoying the sights and sounds of the event, with some good food and drinks to boot it made for a most enjoyable afternoon, with the main event being the Mass Bands at the end of the day with the winning band starting the show and the rest following suite, a true sight to behold and hear as you will definitely get goosebumps when the drums come in on Amazing Grace.
Hopefully for next year there will be more events and more attendee’s as I know there are quite a few Geocachers with Scottish heritage who would enjoy the day among fellow kilt wearers.
Series Events Across SA Bunny Chow Fridays
This month we're featuring the Kwa-Zulu Natal staple event
There is nothing as quintessentially KZN-caching related as the BCF or Bunny Chow Friday Event Cache. There are few things that beat a tasty quarter mutton bunny, a cold beverage and some geo-chatter to see in the weekend.
Did you know: The first official BCF event was held on the 11th October 2013 and was hosted by the official “father of the BCF”, Peter (TechnoNut) Tiedt. (GC4NY9R)
The event was held in the Britannia Hotel and the narrative for that cache has become the event description for most of the approximately seventy BCFs held to date:
The History of Bunny Chow
The bunny chow was created in Durban, home to a large community of people of Indian origin. The precise origins of the food are disputed, although its creation has been dated to the 1940s. It was also sold in Gwelo, Rhodesia, during WWII and is still sold in the nearby town of Kadoma, formerly known as Gatooma.
One story which provides an etymology for bunny chow has it that a restaurant run by people known as Banias (an Indian caste) first created the scooped-out bread and curry dish at a restaurant-cum-cafe called Kapitan's on the corner of Victoria and Albert streets in Durban. The food was a means to serve take-aways to excluded people. During the apartheid regime, Indians were not allowed in certain shops and cafes and so the shop owners found a way of serving the people through back windows, etc. This was an easy and effective way to serve the workers. The traditional Indian meal was roti and beans, however rotis tended to fall apart as a take-away item. So they cut out the centre portion of the bread and filled it with curry and capped the filling with the portion that was cut out.
Another story of the bunny chow's origin is that, as in India, merchants who traditionally sold their wares under the 'bania' tree (also known as the banyan, or Ficus bengalensis) were called 'bania'. The use of this name is known in India going back to antiquity.
Stories of the origin of bunny chow date as far back as the migrant Indian workers arrival in South Africa. One account suggests that Indian migrant workers from India who were brought to South Africa to work the sugar cane plantations of Kwazulu-Natal (Port Natal) required a way of carrying their lunches to the field; a hollowed out loaf of bread was a convenient way to transport their vegetarian curries. Meat based fillings came later. The use of a loaf of bread can also be ascribed to the lack of the traditional roti bread, in the absence of which a loaf of bread would be acceptable as an accompaniment to curry.
I recall my first bunny chow event.. it was held at the “Look Out bar” in Glen Ashley – not specifically a bunny chow venue but certainly close enough for me to be able to make it there and back to the office in a reasonable time. It was back in 2014 and I had told Dom that we couldn’t possibly go to the event before finding at least 100 caches as we didn’t want the “veterans” to think that we were newbies!
I still recall sitting next to Beetles and Bentleys with my notebook out, making notes of peoples handles and corresponding names because a number of people exclusively made use of handles – super confusing for the newbie in awe of all these “big name” cachers with thousands of finds to their names.
My fears of being mocked or laughed at for our relatively low find total were soon allayed as we were welcomed in to the midst of a number of likeminded, friendly strangers who shared a passion for this bizarre hobby which had taken hold of my free time (and some of my not-so-free time).
Post Lock-down Bunny in the Park (held 12 June 2021)
I soon learned that the only reason that one might get a bit of good old-fashioned “chirping” is if you decide to tackle your bunny with a knife and fork!
If you are in KZN and a weekend is nearby, keep an eye out for a possible “BCF” (or “BCFOS” – Bunny Chow Friday on a Saturday) near you!
Cache of the Month
The winner of the July COTM as voted for by our community is GC840 which has also gained a worthy 33 favourite points and has been in play for a massive 22 years. Congratulations child & Ana and don't forget to update your now award winning listing.
The theme for August COTM nominations was Best Hike. The Finalists are (in no order):
An endurance hike on soft sand is required but it's so enjoyable and worthwhile, making you feel like you've earned the cache.
and you can cast your vote for any of them right here. Let's see which is our next hiking destination
The theme for September COTM nominations is "drowning". Creative caches employ many mechanisms but a favourite among us seems to be water. Whether it's requiring a boat to get to the cache or simply a 2L water bottle, we want to hear about the caches that employ the use of water. Get your nominations going here before 19 September.
When submitting your nomination please tell us what your motivation for the nomination is.
Because sometimes, for some people, it is about the numbers… Here is a summary of the South African Geocaching activity for July: 1,085 Cachers found a total of 5,083 caches during July. 41 Cachers placed 82 new caches during July. The number of Cachers who found at least 1 SA cache in the previous 12 months is 7,340. The number of Cachers who placed at least 1 SA cache in the previous 12 months is 225. The total number of active South African caches at the end of July is 15,186.
We have also provided the corrected figures for June monthly finders and hiders after an error in the editing process. Apologies to the community, Aventure_T and Danie Viljoen for said editing error in the previous newsletter.
Top Dogs: Top 5 Finders for the month (and caches found):
1
2 Highmountains
150
2
urbanearthchild
69
3
Aardvarkjunior
66
4
Erann
65
5
DeJClanJnr
54
Top 5 Hiders for the month (and caches hidden):
1
SimonLourens
13
2
JustOverThere
9
3
Panthera03
8
4
Desertal
5
5
KrokosZA
3
Top 5 Finders for 2023 (and caches found):
1
chrisingy
651
2
iPajero
331
3
0utasight
293
4
Weltenbummler47
262
5
Orosman
260
Top 5 Hiders for 2023 (and caches hidden):
1
SimonLourens
67
2
Geofun224
45
3
QwikChek
42
4
WÅLDO
33
5
SawaSawa
32
Top 5 Finders of South African caches for ALL TIME (and caches found):
Cachers with the longest South African geocaching careers:
1
Jors
22.5 years (14 Jan 2001)
2
Brick
21.6 years
3
GPSFrodo
21.3 years
4
ouvrou
21.1 years
5
GPSJane
20.5 years
. Corrected June 2023 Stats: Top 5 Finders for 2023 (and caches found): 1 chrisingy 640 2 iPajero 330 3 0utasight 272 4 Weltenbummler47 262 5 Uncle Chem 253
Corrected June 2023 Stats: Top 5 Hiders for 2023 (and caches hidden): 1 SimonLourens 54 2 Geofun224 45 3 QwikChek 40 4 SawaSawa 32 5 WÅLDO 32
Note: All the above statistics include all South African caches on the geocaching.com database, which doesn’t include Adventure Labs.
New Souvenir: Wheel of Challenges - Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
From September 4–October 1, we’re highlighting the teamwork and community building of Event Caches by offering extra points for finding and logging Event Caches and CITO Events. To shine a light on the community spirit of all the cache hiders who create geocaches for the community, we’re also offering extra points for finding highly-Favorited caches and receiving Favorite points on owned caches.
Here are the leaderboard point values for this challenge:
Attended an Event
75
Attended a CITO Event
75
Found a cache with 10+ Favorite points
50
Received a Favorite point on an owned cache
50
Found it*
25
Earn the easy souvenir for this challenge by earning 100 individual points.
Earn the hard souvenir for this challenge by earning 1000 individual points.
Current Souvenirs
Souvenirs are virtual pieces of art that you can earn, discover, and display on your profile page. They are associated with a particular location, task, find or event and may also be bound by time.
The souvenirs that are currently up for grabs are listed below:
They are your local go-to people, so keep their details for future reference
Eastern Cape
FireflyAfrica (Jonker Fourie)
082 889 2459
Free State
Uncle Chem (Richard Chemaly)
072 431 7131
Gauteng
Leon St (Leon Stoop)
071 330 8435
KwaZulu-Natal
M²C²D (Mark & Ceinwen Oosthuizen)
M 083 324 6176 C 083 324 2167
Limpopo
Boats007 (Willem Botha)
082 463 3700
Mpumalanga
Bouts777 (Gerhard Botha)
082 876 3572
North-West
Team Tip Top (Hansie & Zaneta Van Huyssteen)
H 082 753 8082 Z 083 258 5926
Western & Northern Cape
SKATTIE@1 (Elize Louw)
074 138 6360
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!
Please email our newsletter editor at If you're reading this part, I'm really hopeful that more people send some sweet contributions about event series. I'd like to compile a record of all the historical series in SA