Bisley Nature Reserve Event Sept 2025

By chrisingy
 

After a successful Easter Event held here in Pietermaritzburg where numerous new teams joined us for a fun morning, we decided that a second event should be held this year.

Some of the geocachers present at start time.  Others joined in late.

Ingrid and I held our first event here in Bisley Nature Reserve in 2019, where we had a nice turnout from the Durban cachers and where we met most of them for the first time.
 

The children retrieving the container

We had taken over some of the caches in the reserve from Vixen (a well known geocacher who had moved away from KZN) and we added some new ones to cover a lot of the paths.

Fast forward to 2025 and we realised that most of the active geocachers in the area had already found the old caches in Bisley, so we decided to archive the lot and restart.  Having taken our grandchildren to the reserve on a maintenance trip and seeing how much they enjoyed it, we realised that this would be the perfect site to hopefully attract new geocachers to the hobby.
 

The youngest got his turn to find the cache

So we archived all of our cachers in the park, leaving the 2 existing puzzle caches belonging to other teams, in play.  We placed 19 traditional, 2 multi and 2 puzzle caches in the reserve as well as 2 adventure labs.  It took the teams about 4 hours to complete and find them all and the walk was supposedly 7km, although I think it is a bit more. 

All eyes looking for the prize

We had a good turnout, even though some of the new teams did pull out at the last minute.  Teams from Ballito, Durban, Hillcrest and Bulgaria joined in the fun morning, where the 8 children in attendance were seen with phones in hand leading us sometimes astray but eventually arriving at GZ.  When the children saw the giraffe, all thoughts of searching for the geocaches were soon forgotten. 

And the race is on to find the next cache

Bisley Second Event

By Desertal and Weirty
 

Bisley event was an excellent event. The arrangements which allowed us to arrive late and leave on our own time late the afternoon. We still met cachers ..... on the trails which was great fun especially when we all looking for the same well disguised and hidden containers.
 

We did not manage to finish all caches and have left x3 caches and x2 Al points which we will have to return and complete. (Looking forward to that. )
 

All placed caches were well planned and hiking trails were well utilized with minimal "double upping" and going on repeat trail trips.

We did the Dusi 5Km Parkrun prior to starting the adventure trail event, where we clocked up another 10Km with a little bundu bashing!, caused by our Samsung Phone GPS!? (always have to blame somebody or something!) - "A bad cacher blames his GPS for going in circles" 

Caches Found: 21
Al x 2 : 09 Points
Our Favorites logged: 12

South Africa reprents at GIFF

20 finalists for GIFF and we claim 10% of them! Congratulations (ours in bold):

• Never a Straight Path – Justcarlo
• 2000 – Ipoded
• The Inheritance – Maxagri60 team
• The Best Finds Are Other Geocachers – Owlfly
• Hard Work – Harogs team
• If You Hide It… – Team Vlogger aka geocachingvlogger and Seemyshell
• Dogeza – _nokos_ team
• Tree-m Work – GeoBeeps
• The Island – Blackcoconut
• Flavors of Stealth – CheekyBrit team
• Return of the Cache Napper Trailer – ZippyZipperZoo team
• David CachinBro – First Lamp Post – DNF Hound
• Here’s My Card – Ptowngirl229
• The BisonBuddy5000 – Skimbosh
• Geocaching is a Journey – Defoz
• Little Apple Tree – Rassis on tour
• Gadget Cacher – PezGremlin team
• Super Cache Maintainer – Team Kuropi
• Orthoceras – Breizh Geocacheurs team
• GIFF Planning – Barucci

Celebrate the creativity of the geocaching community by attending a GIFF Event November 6-16, and vote for your favorite films! Event attendees will earn an exclusive 2025 GIFF souvenir.

Interested in hosting your own GIFF Event? Now is the perfect time to start planning! Visit our how-to guide to learn more.

Want to watch reruns of GIFF? Check out previous years on the GIFF website.

Community Contributions
SA Geocaching Stats
By Adventure_T and Danie Viljoen
 

Because sometimes, for some people, it is about the numbers…

 
July 2025

978 Cachers found a total of 3,751 caches during July.
27 Cachers placed 81 new caches during July.
The number of Cachers who found at least 1 SA cache in the previous 12 months is 7,327.
The number of Cachers who placed at least 1 SA cache in the previous 12 months is 190.
The total number of active South African caches at the end of July is 14,312..
 

Top Dogs:

Top 5 Finders for the month (and caches found):

Top 5 Hiders for the month (and caches hidden):
 

Top 5 Finders for 2025 (and caches found):

Top 5 Hiders for 2025 (and caches hidden):

Top 5 Finders of South African caches for ALL TIME (and caches found):

Top 5 Hiders of South African caches for ALL TIME (and caches hidden):

Top 5 Maintainers for the month (and caches maintained):

Note: All the above statistics include all South African caches on the geocaching.com database, which doesn’t include Adventure Labs.

August 2025

839 Cachers found a total of 3,841 caches during August.
29 Cachers placed 88 new caches during August.
The number of Cachers who found at least 1 SA cache in the previous 12 months is 6,705.
The number of Cachers who placed at least 1 SA cache in the previous 12 months is 139.
The total number of active South African caches at the end of August is 14,342.
 

Top Dogs:

Top 5 Finders for the month (and caches found):

Top 5 Hiders for the month (and caches hidden):

Top 5 Finders for 2025 (and caches found):

Top 5 Hiders for 2025 (and caches hidden):

Top 5 Finders of South African caches for ALL TIME (and caches found):

Top 5 Hiders of South African caches for ALL TIME (and caches hidden):

Top 5 Maintainers for the month (and caches maintained):
 

Note: All the above statistics include all South African caches on the geocaching.com database, which doesn’t include Adventure Labs.

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, something is 7BEM9G  hidden here. I'm really hopeful that more people send some sweet contributions about event series.