A New Hobby-Geocaching

It was a Sunday morning!
I was lounging around the house in Wittenberg, Germany.
The daughter of the host family introduced me Geocaching and asked me to join her adventure.

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure hunt game, which focuses on exploring and finding hidden things through the use of GPS systems. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. The caches could contain different things, including videos, books, software, money, food. Thus, it is always a surprise.

The main idea behind it may have been around for hundreds of years, but Geocaching itself was only born in 2000. It was introduced by an US citizen Dave Ulmer after the removal of selective availability on civilian GPS receivers. He then celebrated this new found freedom in global navigation and developed the idea of Geocaching.

Before looking for the Cache, we have located the GPS coordinator in Sabina's mobile phone and made a note of the description of the Cache given by the person who hides the Cache, including the size and type. Then we drove to the location and looked for the hidden treasure.

We were led to a mountain in the town. It was described as one of the most beautiful places to view the town. We have enjoyed the view and in the meanwhile looked for the hidden Cache. We finally found it hidden under the big stone. Sabina signed the logbook and we found some small toys and a small camera in the box. We followed the guideline and took a picture of our feet and then we left to look for another one.

The Second one was hidden under a piece of wood. We have searched for the area for so many times. After 10 mins, Sabina found it! This Cache is smaller and contains only some papers.

I have found this idea very interesting. Sabina told me she usually did it on Sunday as she could go for a walk and have some fun at the same time. She also tried to find a Cache located in Hong Kong. To my surprise, there are quite a few in Hong Kong. Some are located even in the TST Pier and urban parks and most of them are located in the country parks. There are some groups in Hong Kong who like this game and they have organized tour regularly . But I doubt if the people in Hong Kong have the mood during weekends to find them. Anyway it is something new and I would like to go for a treasure hunt someday in hectic Hong Kong.

Official Website: http://www.geocaching.com/