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From the Desk of the Chairman

Well hello there from Kenton on Sea. I’ve come through for a quick task but found a bit of time for caching and had a wonderful experience at Silverleaf Center (GCACT3B). The owners of the curiosity and book shop next to the cache are lapsed cachers themselves (though this isn’t their hide) but they’ve taken a liking to this cache and place a tiny lucky packet in it as well as a bracelet for hiders to claim each time the cache is logged.

I gave them some of my replacement containers and hopefully they’ll be getting back in the game soon but what a lovely couple. It’s wonderful to see these little towns have so many caches and good ones too. I was stumped by the night multi but what fun regardless. It also makes me realize that we’re on the right side of the satellite hiding games isle when I see a ratio of twenty caches to one Munzee. Teeheehee.

Anyway, from a personal perspective, I wasn’t convinced that I’d be chairing GoSA for another year, such was my disappointment in how I handled the last 12 months. I’m both surprised and grateful for the opportunity at redemption and don’t take it lightly. The next year is going to be full of planning and I’d be encouraged if you could reach out and indicate what you’d like to see in our year plan.

What I’ve also done is framed and scheduled all the newsletters for the next 12 months so whether they’re complete or not by the scheduled time, they’re going out! So please send us nice bits and bobs from your events or recollections to add.

As for the leaderboards….oooohhh there’s movement; Terunkie jumps rodnjoan to become 4th highest all time finder of SA caches.

Oh and there’s also a camp in nowhere Namibia that seems very enticing at the end of the month. Roadtrip anybody?

Some interesting History About the Reviewers

By Afrika Rocks

These stats are a little dated - but I wanted to give you an idea of just how many caches we as a review team get to look at (and here I am only going to chat about caches that were published - not those that were archived or not published as they didn't meet the criteria - where we had multiple reviewer notes or communication with the cache owners.

These are all time stats and are roughly up until the end of last year.

The grandfather and his protege - Fish Eagle and Ingwe9 published over 3600 caches - with the bulk being done by Fish Eagle.

Prior to this we had erik88l-r and CrowT-Robot who were international reviewers who looked after our regions. Erik actually visited SA a few times on his caching adventures.

ROTSIP were the next cache reviewer - and they have well over 12000 caches published to date.

Pte Curb joined about a year later and he has well over 11000 caches published already.

GeoawareAFR (and Afrika Rocks) joined the team soon thereafter to look after the rest of Africa (and parts of Middle East) - but the main emphasis has been a local Earthcache reviewer. He has now almost 9000 caches published.

Afrikasekind (with just over 200) and Umsizi with just over 500 have hit the ground at full speed and are building numbers really quickly.

So all told - SA reviewers have published close on 30000 caches over the past 20 odd years.

We also remember Knagur Green (over 2500); XantheTerra (over 4000) and Protea Sangomas (close to 28000 caches published) who are South Africans reviewing in other parts of the world.

Your new GoSA Committee

As elected at the AGM held on 25 October 2025:

• Richard Chemaly (Uncle Chem) - Chair
• Andrie Krokos (KrokosZA) - Secretary
• Lucia Rodrigues (LuciaMPR) - Finance
• Bruce Pantland (BruceTP / Pte Curb)
• Chris Larkin (chrisingy)
• Dieter von Fintel (CamelZA)
• Dwaine Duthie (Umsizi)
• Inge Neumann (Afrikasekind)
• Brian Duthie (BDuthie13)

The 2025 chairman report can be read here.

We Need More Virtuals

Today, South Africa boasts 130 virtual caches (see them on our website). Let’s see if we can push that to 150.

Virtual Rewards 5.0 has begun and 4000 are up for grabs. That means we’re looking for just 0,5% of the available caches to push South Africa to 150. We can do it.

How?

• Have three non-Event geocaches published in 2025.
• Have created your geocaching account before July 29, 2025.
• Prior Virtual Reward recipients are eligible to participate.

For more information, check the official notice from HQ.

Now go hide some caches.

We Need A Social Media Person

Currently, we are looking to source SETA funding to get a social media intern so that we can push GoSA and geocaching more broadly across South Africa. The problem is, once we’ve secured this, we don’t really know of anybody who would be interested.

So…if you or your kids …or neighbor or butcher, whatever…are going through some kind of social media career incubation and want to give it a bash, please reach out.

SA Geocaching Stats

By Adventure_T and Danie Viljoen

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

666 Cachers found a total of 3,525 caches during September.

31 Cachers placed 55 new caches during September.

The number of Cachers who found at least 1 SA cache in the previous 12 months is 6,563.

The number of Cachers who placed at least 1 SA cache in the previous 12 months is 146.

The total number of active South African caches at the end of September is 14,356.

September 2025’s Top Dogs and Doggets:

Events to Attend

Souvenirs to Grab

Some inspiration to go out caching, here’s what’s on offer souvenir-wise

• Discovering 2025 - Find a geocache, attend an event, or complete an Adventure Lab® Location between 1 and 8 January 2025.
• CITO Season 2 - Attend a CITO event between 1 September and 30 November.
• Geocaching International Film Festival (GIFF) - 6 to 16 November.
• December Solstice - 19 to 21 December.
• Farewell 2025 - 24 to 31 December.

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