Happy Blue Switch Day! Thank you for all your input on all the various things. There will be feedback throughout the newsletter relating to the mega planning, playlist and pub quiz.

We're still waiting on some puzzle builders to build us some quiz content for the newsletter so please get in touch if you're up for it. In the meantime, we'll continuing with our Thursday quiz fun in the SA Geocaching Whatsapp Group (join here).I was delighted to get on the Geocaching Podcast last night to discuss some ways of attracting people to our potential mega as part of our planning and they're keen to help get the word out too.

Today we asked whether you knew what the highest cache in the country is. I promise it has nothing to do with 20 April. There are 14 caches that are 3000m high or more. They are:



Thanks to Orosman for pointing out how awesome wasabiGPS's attempt at the top cache was. The photolog is well worth the look.

Finally, we're on the hunt for some enthusiastic Tiktokkers to help us build our Tiktok account so if you're looking for a way to get your kids to relate to geocaching...

Please keep us posted with your geocaching goings on at

Farewell Megaben

It is with a heavy heart that we have been asked to announce that Bennie Groenewald, known to us as Megaben. He remained true to his ethos of not chasing numbers but rather countries. With 14 maps around the world coloured in, he still made time to attend local events when he happened to be in the country and will be missed by our community.

 

 

Mega Planning
by the slowly growing mega committee that you need to be part of

 

Thank you to all of you who have filled in our Mega Survey. If you haven't yet, it isn't too late. We do need to get going soon though to give us the best possible chance of getting this off the ground and we're pretty enthusiastic about it.

Thus far, it seems like the most preferable dates will be end of September so that's starting to fill the picture out nicely for us. Next, we need to confirm where to host and get a local committee on the ground.

As far as whether the event will be a block party or a mega, there's a lot of community indifference which will make working with it easier. Perhaps, we may even be able to do both considering the 2 most favoured dates....hint hint.

Anybody interested in helping put this together, please get in touch.
 

The GoSA Playlist
This was a rather fun exercise. Thanks to all who submitted songs. The official GoSA playlist is available on Spotify right here. Which platform should we focus on next?

Cache Owner Dashboard
by SA Reviewer Umsizi
 

There has been a long conversation around cache owner maintenance and the responsibilities of a CO, with the last two Grapevines coming out it has sparked some interesting viewpoints of what the responsibilities of a CO are. Links to those Grapevines can be found here;

For the technical side here is what Geocaching HQ has to say.

Simply put, you should update the listing and look after the container… simple stuff but we all know life gets in the way of our much-loved hobbies. I thought it would be a good idea to bring in a little tech talk around a newish feature on the Geocaching.com website, that came out in July 2020, as most of us have moved to app usage for Geocaching and rarely use the site much anymore. I know this is the case for me as well.

This dashboard keeps you up to date on your hides. You can access the cache owner dashboard from the Play menu or your player dashboard on Geocaching.com. https://www.geocaching.com/play/owner

Here are some of the features in the dashboard and what they are all about:

Access to quick stats

The dashboard shows a summary of your total number of hides, logs, and Favourite points on your hides. You also get an overview of your hides by geocache type and quick links to your published, unpublished, and archived hides.

Filters help you keep your hides maintained.

Quick filters notify you of Needs Maintenance logs, Reviewer Notes, and remind you of your disabled caches, low health scores and unpublished caches.

Select a filter, review logs and messages, and easily act right from the dashboard.

This Month's Caching Series
Virtuals SA

The last in our series of virtuals, this is a collection of all the virtuals active in the country. It's also a celebration that our website has finally been updated. This is an ongoing project so please keep us posted with goings on.

You can get all the history of South African virtual caches on our dedicated virtuals page:
 

 

How do you give recognition to geocaching achievement, have multiple events around the country and have a great geocaching time? Who knows but maybe the answer is a pub quiz of sorts.

At 7pm on 21 June, cachers from all over the country (actually even the world) are invited to join our pub quiz from wherever they are; preferably some event so get publishing.

"How will it work?"

The Quiz starts at 7pm and consists of 10 rounds.

You should be excited because this isn't your ordinary geocaching quiz. This one is filled with near impossible local trivia. Haven't you ever wondered who has the second longest streak or which province had the most foreign cachers in 2014? This is where you're going to find out.

You'll be required to view the quiz-master through Google Meets and each individual can participate on their phone through their browser. We're investigating the most cost effective tool to conduct this but it will likely be AhaSlides or some sort of similar program.

So set up your braais or book a place in a pub and invite your caching mates over.

The questions have already been set and we're looking forward to this project! More info and the history of this idea in the June newsletter.

Once your event has been published, do register to receive the link for the quiz right here.

Feature App of the month
Apps make our lives better and whether you're using the official app, C:Geo, cachly or whatever your poison, there are so many other apps to make geocaching better, even if they're not designed for geocaching. 

This month, we're looking at AllTrails

Finding geocaches is fun but somebody has to place them. When you have geocaches to guide you on the trail it makes the trail more easy and fun. If you don't have geocaches to guide you or, even better, if you want to place geocaches to guide others, you need a good start.

Enter AllTrails. The community based app that registers nearby walking paths and offers community insights and experiences. This allows you to go hiking with even without geocaches leading the way and getting some understanding of the area. Better yet, it will help with where to place your next cache.

 

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