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The "Shikma" Trees of Holon Traditional Cache

This cache has been archived.

yevgets: Been there, seen it. Geocaching is not about breaking into construction sites. Au revoir.

19:38
📷yevgets

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Hidden : 2/12/2017
Difficulty:
1 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size:   micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:

The Ficus Sycomorus tree (Shikma, שקמה) is the symbol of Holon and this cache will intorduce you to some of the famous ones.


The Shikma tree became Holon's symbol in 1937. In fact, the exact tree that appears on the symbol of the city is the big tree in the middle of the junction, next to the bus station. The cache is located next to another tree, which is smaller and located in less central location, to ensure stealthy logging.

About 10 years ago the junction was rebuilt to accommodate the "Holon Junction" train station. The Shikma tree stood in the way so they had to get rid of it, but being a unique and protected tree they couldn't just cut it down. Instead, they  moved it to it's current location in a complex engineering procedure. You can watch this (Hebrew) movie that shows how this process took place.

If you like this tree, there are many more like it around the city. 111 trees, to be exact, some also serve as hiding places of other caches, so you can enjoy geocaching around the city while and hunting the Shikma trees at the same time.

One final anecdote - if moving the tree impresses you, wait until you hear what they had to move as well. Apparently, the Holtz junction (1km to the north) was recklessly built without taking into account the train tracks that were planned long before. As the workers started laying the tracks, they found out that there wasn't enough room so they had to move the entire bridge 2m to the east...

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Gur anzr bs gur pnpur unf fbzr zrnavat...

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)