Geocaching: The Art Of Hiding And Finding Treasure
We are in times of change in which terms and activities become fashionable very quickly without us knowing very well what they are or what they consist of. We are going to talk about geocaching or GPS gymkana, increasingly practiced all over the world. Surely a thousand questions have arisen in your head now. We will try to answer them all below.
What is geocaching?
Geocaching consists of hiding “treasures” anywhere and then finding them with the help of a GPS. Whoever finds that treasure records his name and the date of the find in a notepad that remains with the rest of the objects.
In detail, the activity is that a person hides an object anywhere, be it the country or the city. Then, write down and publish the coordinates through a geographic receiver. That way, other people can search for it too.
What treasures can be found?
The “treasures” that can be found are diverse. What we would call basic would consist of a notebook, where the name of all those who have found it is noted. Others would be, in addition to the logbook or notebook, objects of small value.
There is a premise that remains: if you take that object, you must leave one of the same or higher value in its place so that someone else can find it. These objects are especially travelbugs or geocoins , that is, traveling objects that must be removed from their hiding place and left in another, but never remain with the geocachero (who has found it) to fulfill their mission.
All these objects are collected in a cache or geocache , that is, a kind of lunch boxes of different sizes, which can be translated as treasures or geocaches.
What game modes are there?
There are many different game modes, and one of the best known is that of chained geocaches. It consists of finding an object in which a note appears with the coordinates of other gifts or notes with other new coordinates.
Other modalities are :
- Bookcrossing : consists of releasing books in public places for other readers to pick them up and do the same.
- Bike Crossing : this practice is basically to fix used bicycles and leave them in strategic places, so that other users can use them. There is no specific monitoring of the bike, but through specialized websites you can participate in the process.
- PhotoTag : disposable cameras are circulated and once finished, they are returned to their owner, who reveals them and uploads them to the phototag website.
- Eurobilltracker : the objective of this activity is to follow euro banknotes around the world. To achieve this, users must enter serial numbers and information for their location.
- Where’s George? : It is the previous practice but with US dollar bills.
- Where’s Willy? : is similar to the previous two, but in this case using Canadian dollar bills.
How to enjoy geocaching?
Today there are pages and mobile apps that help geocatchers to get in touch with each other to share their experiences and find treasures with people who share the same passion.
The process is simple: first you have to create an account on one of the many platforms that exist, such as geocatching.com. Then, through the apps and thanks to the GPS, you will find the geocaches that are near you. The third step is to register the find with your name and date and deposit it back where you found it. Lastly, share your experience with other geocatchers around the world.
The advantages of using these types of apps are many. For example, they would help us when it comes to knowing the mission of each of the objects that we find thanks to the codes that they carry and that transmit information to us through the web. Another of the great benefits would be the fact of being able to share experiences with other geocaching lovers .
As we said at the beginning, more and more people are signing up for this activity. This has created an interesting tourism market niche. Many hoteliers, towns and cities are taking advantage of the pull of geocaching to launch routes and get a greater number of visitors to their respective areas.
