Afkule Monastery GC1RM77 GEOCACHE OF THE WEEK – March 26, 2012

A view of "Afkule"

A remote geocache perches along the cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It’s hidden on the coast of Turkey.

But finding “Afkule Monastery” (GC1RM77) does more than reward cachers with a smiley; it transports  treasure-hunting adventurers a thousand years in the past.

The cache is located among the isolated ruins of a monastery. The buildings, including structures carved into the rock face, date back to the 11th century.

The difficulty 2, terrain 3 traditional cache was hidden by barmbek in 2009.

Cache and log from "Afkule Monastery"

Geocacher Schlauchen logged the cache last year. She emailed Geocaching.com to suggest “Afkule Monastery” as the Geocache of the Week. She says the cache rates as her favorite find in 2011. She writes, “You climb down a very steep hill and all of a sudden you’re out of the forest and have a breathtaking view of the old monastery and the sea, which is really as blue as it’s shown in the cache listing.” She says another element adds to the allure of this cache, “Of course there’s also the famous ‘usual muggle tourists don’t come here’ feeling.”

View near cache location
View near the cache location

Just over 50 people have logged smileys on the cache, averaging about two finds a month. It’s received 12 Favorites Points.

Continue to explore some of the most engaging geocaches around the globe. Check out all the Geocaches of the Week on the Latitude 47 blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com.

If you’ d like to nominate a Geocache of the Week, send an email with your name, comments, the name of the geocache, and the GC code to pr@groundspeak.com.