Geocaching: Found the Cache

A few weeks ago, walking on a wild life park near La Pineda I found a family with a GPS looking for something on the middle of the trees that can be found in the area. The father aproched to me with a GPS device and he told me that they were looking for a treasure... The treasure they was looking for was a tupperware containing a notebook, a pen and one or more gifts with a plastified paper explaining what was all that stuff... in fact it was a cache.

Geocaching started a few years ago, under Clinton mandate, when he decide to enhance the civilian use of GPS satellite system allowing for that purpose the same precision as the military one, 3 meters. A few weeks from that day, the first cache was placed on the USA.

The game is so simple. All you need is a GPS device (I use a HP hw6500 that unifies cellphone, PDA and GPS) and a connection to Internet. You can start your adventure connecting to the geocaching site and registering for a new user. Then you'll be able to access the database of caches arround the world, finding the nearest to your coordinates. Each cache page give you information about the place, that it's usually a beautiful place to go, information about the coordinates where you can found the cache, and a log showing the people that have already found the cache before you.

To find the cache I recomend you to get a good topographic map of the area (In Catalunya you can get the maps for free from the Institut Cartogràfic Català saving them on the GPS device with a waypoint locating the cache.
To find it, you have to approach to the coordinates and start the finding, because it's hidden. When you get it, it's time to read a few entries from the notebook and register your found. Then look for the gifts that can be found in the tupperware and make trade with them (if you get one of the gifts you have to put another one for the next geocacher). Now take a breath and take your time exploring the nearby area, because the caches can be founded on beatifull places in order to discover to the geocachers.

I hope this post will encourage you to start this funny hobby that can give you good moments in beautiful places and can be played any place arround the world, near your residence, in a travel... Good luck with the caching.