Auntie Po lives on a small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. When she learned about geocaching she thought it would be fun to bury one offshore near her bungalow. (She was unaware of the rule that caches shouldn't be buried). She said she buried it very deeply at the coordinates: UTM: 45G E 481998 N 5074130
The above is sufficient for determining the solution. However, it might be helpful to recall some details about UTM coordinates. Zone numbers begin at #1 at 180°W, go east to west changing every 6 degrees. The 10 latitude band letters in the northern hemisphere, beginning at the equator, are N (as in North), (skipping O), P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W and X and change every 8 degrees. In the south they begin at 80° S and are C, D, E, F ,G, H, (skipping I), J, K, L and M. The easting component is relative to the central meridian of the UTM longitude zone, which is set at 500000 meters. The northing component is measured north in meters from the equator in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere it's measured from the south pole so that it ends up at 10 million at the equator.
It's probably easiest to compute the solution staying in UTM coordinates. Should you choose to convert to and from lat/lon note the following. Understanding and coding the equations for the conversions is not easy. If you do this let me know and you'll have my admiration. Several websites, in addition to geocaching.com, for converting are available.They can use different formats for UTM as well as lat/lon and might give slightly varying answers. In particular, the burial site can be written in "Standard" UTM as UTM 45S 481998 5074130 in which the S indicates the southern hemisphere. Similarly N would indicate the northern hemisphere. In the UTM used by geocaching.com of course the S and N would refer to latitude bands, the S band just to our south and the N band just above the equator. You also might encounter the burial site in NATO UTM as 45G VL 81998 74130, which conveniently combines the global zone 45G with the local one VL, similar to our VK.
Hint: It's easy to get off by one in the computations. The last digit in the easting should be 8 and in the northing 0. To certify your solution enter it in the form VKxxxxxyyyyy (short for UTM: 15 T E 4xxxxx N 49yyyyy) and receive the coordinates in lat/lon format as well as a hint on the hide.
You can validate your puzzle solution with certitude.
Congrats to the first ten puzzle solvers:
1. rickrich
2. Fistful of Nachos
3. gallaghd
4. sparkyfry
5. OleSeeker
6. Boreal Walker
7. ctc128
8. Bigrock95
9. salsman
10. Essap