Can you handle the jandal?

Finally I am back adding to our caching blog, all thanks to a tweet from @nlouuwrens while I was away up north.  @daikininz and @nlouwrens set up Handle the Jandal 1 and Handle the Jandal 2 
I was very excited to receive 1 via snail mail last week, and the yummy chocolate that came with it!

The jandal traveled with me for the week and even came to school with me...

Today I took the Jandal out for brunch to the Good Oil then to the Stadium for the Sunday Market.  Then Katie and I took the Jandal to Coffee Club for a latte!  

Then we headed out to the beach!  I was very keen to place the jandal in Surfer's Paradise Almost because it is such a cute container but I just couldn't find it!  I had to resort to Ruby's Rest! 

This is the view up over the dune from the Jandal's first South Island resting spot!  I wonder how long it will be before she moves to a new beach....
Thanks so much to Nathaniel and Rebecca for sharing the journey with me and getting me back to blogging my caching adventures...
Happy travels...

Ageless...

Okay, time to come clean... Most of my family just don't get geocaching, in fact they find it all a bit strange!
Well, today I took Mum to a funeral in Owaka, and on the way back I introduced her to geocaching and SHE GETS IT!  In fact she LOVED it!  We had three finds, two at Pounawea, where I dropped off a dolphin travel bug and one at Port Molyneux where we picked up a rubber ducky triplet from Brazil!

At the landing at Pounawea we had to wait for a shepherd moving his flock, to avoid getting muggled!!  Very country!

http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?guid=ec3340f3-a91b-4176-91dc-adfbbc60361b
When I logged this trackable, we were amazed that the theme song for the ducky was the last song at the funeral - very poignant!
We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when ... but I know we'll meet again some sunny day ! 
So I am taking the little ducky up to lake Dunstan, then putting it in a cache to try and get it to Queenstown and out on it's journey back to Brazil for it's reunion!
I am so impressed at Mum's excitement and enthusiasm for this past-time and am looking forward to another caching session with her!  She even took time to weed the garden at the rest area in Port Molyneux!

Changing views...

I have travelled through Roxburgh for most of my life for holidays in Central Otago but have never explored the township or deviated off the main road!  Today I had an excuse!  I didn't know you could cross the Clutha river at the back of Roxburgh or head up the walkway for a completely different view of the town!

Then I travelled onto Lawrence where I met Tania for a coffee and took her for her first ever geocaching walk!  We had a very pleasant walk around the back of the Lawrence town until the skies opened and we got saturated!  Oh well - all great fun!  Found two caches - dropped off two travel bugs, including Daisy May the cow from the Shetland Islands in a cache near this paddock of her cousins!

Now Claire and I are returning to Lawrence for a day caching with Tania in a couple of weeks - YAY

Caching in Cromwell

It is soooo hot up here and the only place to cool down is the lake! Annie had an awesome time swimming and I had a great time caching! Probably the most sophisticated hide I have found was this one with gym leaves intricately stitched onto the sock holding the cache in a pulley well up in the tree! Very clever indeed!
I also managed to find 2 more caches and now have 3 tbs to move on...

Eeny Meeny...

About to head off for my first milestone... Wanting my 5oth find to be one of some significance I checked out the map. It is somewhat overwhelming how many there actually are out there...

We Are Not Alone

Anne and I commented last week that there is definitely some magic in caching with someone else. The challenges and conversations that come out during this time are often fun and quite random! I don't see caching as an individual sport. So, because of this I did not go out caching today but a hike. Determined to get fit this summer, I walked along the harbour and up to Moana Pool for a few laps.

Feeling quite virtuous and enjoying the sunshine, I stopped for some lunch in a square in town. Enjoying the scenery I thought to myself that this would be a fantastic place for a cache.

Short version of the story was that I was actually sitting right next to my one find for the day. Got me thinking... just how many caches I have been so close to previously when I did not even know they even existed.  I guess that's the magic of caching!

Defining Caching...

Anne and I have found a fun way to target fitness with a spot of caching being the motivator... Tonight while we were on skype planning a short brisk circuit around 6 caches another friend skyped in asking what I was up to tomorrow... When I told her we were down on a beach tomorrow morning she warned me about the seals that are currently hanging around and asked me why on earth I was down there at that time...

The explanation I offered was -
 
forgot about the seals... the whole thing is really quite bizarre... An adult somewhere takes the correct caching protocol to log a cache virtually online. In real space this might be a lunch box, a plumbing pipe or an eclipse container in a real location. 

Inside is a notebook for people to sign and some cachers exchange "treasures" like badges, or souvenirs... Some even hide a tag and mascot that is traveling the world and relies on people to pick it up and move it to another cache... It really is an adult treasure hunt...