Geocaching in Mpumalanga

Midterm Break
The kids had a midterm break this past week.  It was short, Quince's school week ended on Wednesday and she was back in school on the following Tuesday, while Alexander went an extra half-day on Thursday.  (Alexander has gone to school a total of 1.5 days longer than Quince this term and he is counting.)   We drove about 4 hours away to Mpumulanga Province for 5 days and 4 nights of site-seeing and vacation.

Mac Mac Falls in Mpumulanga

Geocaching
This past spring we were introduced to the sport of "geocaching" by Jessica, Matt, Emma and Jackson.  The way it works is someone hides a "cache" somewhere and marks its location with GPS coordinates placed on a website.  Other people visit these websites and enter the coordinates into their GPS and then go look for the "cache".  Typically the "cache" is some type of water proof container.  I have seen metal ammo boxes, cylindrical plastic containers, tupperware, and film canisters.  Inside the cache is a logbook, a pencil, and some loot.  Once you find the cache you fill out the logbook, exchange the loot with loot that you have brought along for the occasion and return the cache to its hidden location.  You have to do this without given the position of the cache to muggles who might just raid the cache and not return it to its rightful location.  If you want to learn more about geocaching and what you need to get started go to this link.

Alexander Looking for the Cache

There's an App for That.
There is a geocaching app for the iPhone which we used to identify the nearby caches.  The app displays the location of the cache and the phone on a map.  More useful is the compass which directs you which heading to follow and how close you are to the cache.  The exciting part about using a 3G iPhone is that the compass barely works.  With my phone you get the added excitement of the battery running out quickly so you can only use the app sparingly.  One time we even took our Garmin GPS from the car and set it to walking mode.  As a geocaching tool it wasn't particularly useful as it wanted us to stick to the marked roads, but it was very satisfying to hear it say "Arriving at destination" when we reached the geocache.

We Found It!

How we rolled
On our last full day in Mpumalanga we took a driving trip up the Blyde River Canyon to see the scenery.  It reminded me of driving trips that I made with my family growing up.  (I think the MacLeod/Hopkins tended to linger a little longer at the locations than the MacLeods did.)  When we arrived at a location we would check to see if there were any caches nearby.  If there were, we would go out to find one.  The neat thing about geocaching is that gives the kids a goal, an objective, a destination!  Alexander especially pushes on to the find the cache.  Next thing we know, we are taking a hike, exploring, finding giant grasshoppers (the grow them big here!), looking at scat.  The complaints, "Do I have to get out of the car?" "Why do we have to stop here?" and ill humors dissolve and disappear as we set out on our mission.

Next steps
The next stage in our geocaching adventure is to plant our own cache.  We have purchased the container and a supply of loot. We want to place it near our home in a public park. We will do this in the next month or so.

What a cute family.  Can you help us with a nickname?

Help!
Help us come up with our family geocaching nickname.  We spent some time on this in the car and got nowhere, but I think we need more brain cells thinking about this.  If you have any ideas for our family nickname please add them to the comments.  (If you can't get comments to work, then e-mail us and we will place them in the comments.)

In the category of I created this map because I could and aren't links great here is a Google Map of Geocaches that We Found in Mpumalanga.