“La dent du Turc” GC1PP6C translates into English as “Turk’s Tooth.” The rugged rock ridge erupts from the French countryside. Franky84 hide the cache some 400 meters above sea-level back in 2009. The difficulty 2, terrain 5 geocache has already garnered 9 Geocaching.com Favorite Points.
Relaxing after logging a smiley
The cache page is written in both French and English and warns adventurers about the terrain. There’s also some advice. Franky84 writes, “If you’ve never been up there. Try this cache! You will never forget it.” More than 30 people have logged a “Found it” on La dent du Turc.
Geocachers use their log entries to thank the cache owner for taking them to a new vista. One geocacher writes, “This was a great challenge for me. And I made it to the top . Thanks for this great cache.”
This Geocache of the Week was chosen from suggestions on the Geocaching.com Facebook page.
Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the world. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on our blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com.
Nota do editor: No decorrer deste ano, os Lackeys da Groundspeak estão a viajar milhares de quilómetros a partir da sua sede (o HQ) para participar e espalhar boa disposição em mais de uma dezena de Mega-Eventos espalhados pelo mundo. Nate, também conhecido por Nate the Great, foi uma das presenças no Mega-Evento 11 Years! Oeiras – Portugal que teve lugar a 1 de Maio em Lisboa, Portugal. Nate é Lackey desde 2003 e coordena o desenvolvimento de novas funcionalidades na Groundspeak. Este é o seu diário de viagem:
Lackey Nate the Great
Estou a mais de 12000 Km de casa e entre 500 dos meus amigos mais próximos (e que acabei de conhecer hoje) num parque nos arredores de Lisboa, Portugal. No preciso momento em que estão a fazer uma caricatura minha, o DJ de serviço passa “Take On Me” dos A-Ha. Uma situação absurda como esta seria o suficiente para me colocar um sorriso lunático nos lábios durante os 10 minutos que demoraria a terminar o meu retrato. Mas passa um geocacher anónimo, sorri e tira uma fotografia, enquadrando a placa trackable com o meu nome. Dá-cá-mais-cinco e tal… E desaparece entre a multidão. Só tenho tempo para ouvir o caricaturista a dizer “Senta-te quietinho, se faz favor…”
A equipa iURKings
É dificil ficar sentado quieto num Mega-Evento.
Choque de cultura? Geocaching é cultura. Quando estamos em viagem e nos sentimos desenquadrados de tudo, vamos a um evento de geocaching e sentimo-nos em casa, identificando desde logo as personagens habituais: o frenético doido dos FTF agarrado ao telefone; o escondedor de caches compulsivo, com mais tupperwares escondidas no meio do mato que caches encontradas… e mais geocachers de botas cheias de lama que crianças a brincar no parque infantil. Se não fosse a agradável sonoridade do português falado à minha volta, podia ser em qualquer parte do mundo.
O Nate não está nesta fotografia
O espírito de aventura é algo naturalmente partilhado por todos, mas os portugueses em particular têm o instinto explorador gravado na sua identidade nacional. Na era dos Descobrimentos, entre os séculos XV e XVII, exploradores como Vasco da Gama trouxeram fama e riqueza a Portugal viajando pelo mundo. É impossível viajar por Portugal sem tropeçar num monumento comemorativo desta ou daquela viagem. A probabilidade de haver uma cache mistério baseada num desses factos é alta. Hoje em dia, é fácil comprar mapas topográficos detalhados do território, o que pode explicar o crescimento exponencial do geocaching em Portugal durante os últimos anos. É no geocaching que este povo está a redescobrir o seu desejo de explorar e de conhecer coisas novas, mesmo que seja à porta de casa. Por tudo isto e pela história e tradição que me rodeiam, Portugal é o centro de tudo.
Ou então o geocaching é divertido. Para quê complicar?
O Geocacher TZR
Estou de volta aos Estados Unidos, a folhear um bloco de notas cheio de ideias rabiscadas à pressa sobre como melhorar o site Geocaching.com. Sim, eu admito. Havia um motivo subjacente para ir a este Mega-Evento. Não, o meu motivo não era só encher o bandulho de porco no espeto (divinal), desfrutar da hospitalidade dos geocachers locais (interminável)… certamente que não era ouvir tesouros deprimentes dos anos 80 enquanto me desenhavam a caricatura (que coisa bizarra). Quis, acima de tudo, estar em contacto com geocachers, perceber melhor o que é que a Groundspeak faz bem e o que é que podemos fazer para ser melhores. Como Lackey, aprendi que a melhor coisa que posso fazer aos geocachers é aparecer, ouvi-los e tomar notas para depois fazer com que o website esteja ao nível das suas exigentes expectativas. Porque os geocachers portugueses estão muito à frente no que toca à inovação no geocaching. E isso facilita-me muito o trabalho.
International Cache In Trash Out weekend is nearly here! Cache In Trash Out (CITO) is an effort by the geocaching community to clean up parks and other cache-friendly places around the world. You can make a difference by picking up litter on every geocaching outing and by attending a CITO Event Cache. CITO Events are organized by geocachers and may involve assisting with a clean-up, removal of invasive species or revegetation efforts.
CITO Events are held throughout the year, but the initiative gains special focus for one weekend around Earth Day each year, when the worldwide geocaching community holds CITO Events to benefit their local spaces. The 9th annual Cache In Trash Out weekend is scheduled for April 30th – May 1st, 2011.
CITO Events are open to everyone. Participate in a CITO event near you to meet your fellow geocachers, add a CITO icon to your geocaching stats, and help preserve the beauty of the places where you love to go geocaching! There are many events scheduled for the dates surrounding April 30th, so make sure to check out the CITO Event calendar today.
Thank you to Magellan, makers of the eXplorist® GC, which is 100% dedicated to geocaching, for sponsoring the 2011 Cache In Trash Out initiative. Learn more about Magellan.
The cache page for “The Ghost Orchid” (GC112JY) pulls no punches. Three paragraphs into the description, SeaAggies lets adventure seekers know what awaits them on this difficulty five, terrain five Multi-Cache.
The page reads, “Put on your mud boots, slather on the mosquito spray and be sure to bring a lot of water and some snacks for this four mile journey through some remote parts of Fakahatchee Strand.”
Fakahatchee Strand is home to a delicate ecosystem populated by endangered plants and animals, including the rare Polyrhiza lindenii, known as the Ghost Orchid. All the plants and animals in the Fakahatchee Strand are protected by state and federal laws. The cache page lets geocachers know that the journey to this cache will offer amazing opportunities for breath-taking photos.
The Ghost Orchid
“The Ghost Orchid” includes five challenging stages, some of which even contain multiple components. The cache was placed in February of 2007 and has accumulated 20 Geocaching Favorite Points.
Most geocachers keep the cache on their watch list for months, slowly assemble a group to tackle it and then work together to earn a smiley. One geocacher who recently logged a “found it” on the cache writes, “The strand is beautiful. The plants, the water, the structure and the places you visit/stumble upon inspire some sense of respect and as a biologist I enjoyed the experience of traversing this area by doing the stages.”
Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the world. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on our blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com.
Every Friday at 2pm, geocachers come from as far away as China and as close as the neighboring office complex to visit Groundspeak Headquarters. No matter where they come from, they have two things in common before they arrive: an enormous love of Geocaching and a story they can’t wait to tell.
Groundspeak momentarily transforms from the busy buzz of Lackeys keeping the website running into a lobby full of cachers squealing with delight as they drop Trackables, trade stories and hang out with other geo-addicts from all over the world.
Sara and Nicole
Along with Nicole (Louie Bliss), a fellow Community Relations team member, I’m Sara (gonzogrrl) one of the lucky Lackeys who gets to be there each time, greeting cachers as they find the epic HQ cache, GCK25B. “So…what do you do here?” cachers often ask us. By day, we’re the ones answering emails and phone calls, helping people solve issues so they have the best geocaching experience. But when geocachers drop in, we stop what we’re doing and spend time with them as they discovering the cache, take photos in the photobooth, buy souvenirs and check out the big screen map of geocaches being logged in real time all over the world.
If you ever want to drop in, it’s easy to get an appointment. Just email us at contact@geocaching.com. Tell us a little about yourself, where you’re coming from, and when you can visit and we’ll be happy to send you the coordinates to the office (hint: we’re not in the middle of Lake Union. Shocking, I know). Since we are a busy office, we like to schedule visits on Fridays at 2pm. Sometimes one of the Founders and other Lackeys drop by to visit too—we all love meeting the people that make this game more than Tupperware in the woods!
Sole Seeker's photo inside the Groundspeak photobooth
I’ve met so many different cachers, but I can still remember some of my favorite stories from the visits. There’s Sole Seeker, who came here for his 10,000th find, and was surprised to find we’d made him a sign and blown up balloons to celebrate with him. There’s also J&J Brown, who told us about the huge camouflaged cache they have hidden in their front yard that fools seekers every time because it (spoiler alert) looks just like a tree. And then there’s foomanjoo, a world-traveling photographer who had just done some caching in Korea and was off to his next adventure finding caches along Route 66 in California.
But whomever you are—whether the HQ is your fifth find or your 5,000th—we welcome you at the lilypad. We hope you come see us soon!
