Tears of joy roll down my face as I quickly checked the geocaching site this morning, and yet another new cache has been place! It's just fantastic, and finally we are getting some new caches to go for! Thanks go out to those placing new caches out here, since sadly so many have been archived in recent weeks, due to all the construction that is ongoing in Dubai and the other emirates.
Thanks Camel Master and Jamesdxb for putting a new cache out there this month! Keep it up everyone!
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Saturday, September 15, 2007
What a nice day
Well, this day started off so pleasantly! Woke up to check the site, and whoa!! There is a new cache, and its in Sharjah!!! So we started packing our stuff, and prepared to hit the road!
Conveniently, the newly published "Sharjah's Jungle" was really close to one of the other remaining to be discovered caches, "Animal Instincts". So we decided to bundle these two together, and scratch a few more off the list!
Both were extremely fun, and very educational. Ok, so "Animal Instincts" wins the educational award, hands down, but SJ was very rewarding in its own right. It never ceases to amaze me at how things can grow in one of the worlds most inhospitable environments! Even in the UAE several people die every year in these deserts, usually tourists, totally underestimating the devastating effects of the extreme desert heat!
So we found the two caches, within about 10 km of each other, and yet taking about 6 hours to complete... man, time just gets away from me these days!
We also went venturing for a new cache location, and we came across UAE's version of Area 51. It was weird, and oddly out of place. It would make a nice UFO landing spot :)
We ended up hiding my fairer half's "UAE Cache" around this location. Check it out, and tell me it isn't strange.
I will sort through some photos and add em to the blog in the next day or so.
"Sharjah's Jungle"
Sunset near "Animal Instincts"
Happy Caching!
Conveniently, the newly published "Sharjah's Jungle" was really close to one of the other remaining to be discovered caches, "Animal Instincts". So we decided to bundle these two together, and scratch a few more off the list!
Both were extremely fun, and very educational. Ok, so "Animal Instincts" wins the educational award, hands down, but SJ was very rewarding in its own right. It never ceases to amaze me at how things can grow in one of the worlds most inhospitable environments! Even in the UAE several people die every year in these deserts, usually tourists, totally underestimating the devastating effects of the extreme desert heat!
So we found the two caches, within about 10 km of each other, and yet taking about 6 hours to complete... man, time just gets away from me these days!
We also went venturing for a new cache location, and we came across UAE's version of Area 51. It was weird, and oddly out of place. It would make a nice UFO landing spot :)
We ended up hiding my fairer half's "UAE Cache" around this location. Check it out, and tell me it isn't strange.
I will sort through some photos and add em to the blog in the next day or so.
"Sharjah's Jungle"
Sunset near "Animal Instincts"Happy Caching!
Thursday, September 13, 2007
How to get more caches going?
I'm a little frustrated, and itching to find new caches. At the moment, I have already found most of the caches in the UAE, and started venturing into Oman to pick up the very view that are hidden there.
I am dying to go cache hunting, but unless we can get the active cachers to start hiding stuff as well, sigh, this sport is rapidly going to end here. I have set a goal of hiding one cache for every 5 that I find. I am actually going to go ballistic and hide a whole bunch over the next two weeks, hoping to inspire you all to do the same. Phoenixdxb, my better half, has been the most active cache-hider in recent months, and I would like this trend to rub off on all cachers!
We have a small caching community that grows a little every week, please encourage all to do their bit to hide a cache every now a then. I mean, really, a country like the UAE... Dubai, with their 3 millions expats, could really do much better that the 69 caches (4-5 of which are archived) currently present.
Sigh, help a brother out, hide a cache!
I am dying to go cache hunting, but unless we can get the active cachers to start hiding stuff as well, sigh, this sport is rapidly going to end here. I have set a goal of hiding one cache for every 5 that I find. I am actually going to go ballistic and hide a whole bunch over the next two weeks, hoping to inspire you all to do the same. Phoenixdxb, my better half, has been the most active cache-hider in recent months, and I would like this trend to rub off on all cachers!
We have a small caching community that grows a little every week, please encourage all to do their bit to hide a cache every now a then. I mean, really, a country like the UAE... Dubai, with their 3 millions expats, could really do much better that the 69 caches (4-5 of which are archived) currently present.
Sigh, help a brother out, hide a cache!
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Tired
Being super exhausted and working and traveling a lot, I have been a little lax on updating this blog. I did stay faithful to the cause and do some geocaching last weekend, but they were all maintenance visits, and helping my best friend (TheToadNet) get to some of the more out of the way caches, he hadn't visited yet.
I am just so tired, I actually thought about doing nothing this coming weekend. Yeah right!! I am just too hooked, and I need to move a TB or two along, plus I want to spend a day hiding caches. I currently have 39 finds, and I have set some goals for myself and for the community here in the UAE.
Myself, I would like to find my 100th cache before the end of the year. This feat should easily be accomplished with a visit to my mom in Holland in November (actually going to watch Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band in Arhem and the bonus is spending some time with mom). Since there are some 11000 caches in a 100 mile radius of my moms home, I think I should easily be able to reach the 100 cache mark this year, if not way more. I look at our local cache approver, Eric, and I wonder how on earth he got to 2000 cache finds since the sport only started in 2001.
That gets me to the local UAE community goal. I would like our community to grow to the point where we are adding at least 10 new caches a month. At the very least, I would like our community to be in the position of having 100 active caches by the end of the year, and that means in the UAE.
There are many difficulties in having and maintaining caches here in the UAE. Particularly, the ever changing landscape, areas that have been clear for years are now being leveled for development, and development is happening everywhere!!
I am also on a mission to put more caches in the other emirates. While most of us live in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, there are no caches in Sharjah, Ajman, and only recently in RAK. And some of the caches out there require a considerable distance travelled before encountering a cache. I would like to rectify that, placing more caches on the routes to the major cache spot in this region.
Well, that is all for now, stay posted for a whole bunch of additional caches coming soon.
I am just so tired, I actually thought about doing nothing this coming weekend. Yeah right!! I am just too hooked, and I need to move a TB or two along, plus I want to spend a day hiding caches. I currently have 39 finds, and I have set some goals for myself and for the community here in the UAE.
Myself, I would like to find my 100th cache before the end of the year. This feat should easily be accomplished with a visit to my mom in Holland in November (actually going to watch Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band in Arhem and the bonus is spending some time with mom). Since there are some 11000 caches in a 100 mile radius of my moms home, I think I should easily be able to reach the 100 cache mark this year, if not way more. I look at our local cache approver, Eric, and I wonder how on earth he got to 2000 cache finds since the sport only started in 2001.
That gets me to the local UAE community goal. I would like our community to grow to the point where we are adding at least 10 new caches a month. At the very least, I would like our community to be in the position of having 100 active caches by the end of the year, and that means in the UAE.
There are many difficulties in having and maintaining caches here in the UAE. Particularly, the ever changing landscape, areas that have been clear for years are now being leveled for development, and development is happening everywhere!!
I am also on a mission to put more caches in the other emirates. While most of us live in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, there are no caches in Sharjah, Ajman, and only recently in RAK. And some of the caches out there require a considerable distance travelled before encountering a cache. I would like to rectify that, placing more caches on the routes to the major cache spot in this region.
Well, that is all for now, stay posted for a whole bunch of additional caches coming soon.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
What a long day
What started out as a quick drive to Hatta and doing some of the cache's around there, turned out to be an epic cache hunt. A whole 10 hours later, as I sit here now, I am so exhausted, a reckon my legs are going to ache like crazy tomorrow.
Wow, six of the Hatta area caches found today, all the ones we went for! (Even though we got really lucky on a couple of the caches, which could have taken us much much longer.) It was brilliant, with a nice relatively cool start to the day, with temperatures starting at 32 degrees and reaching a bearable 35 degrees at noon. It slowly started getting warmer from there on out, and finally reached around 42 degrees at around 4pm. So we were fairly lucky with the temperatures today.
I got to experience a whole new side of the UAE/Oman again today, seems every weekend we see something completely different.
One of the highlights this time around was my very first puzzle cache, Rubik Challenge, which was, well to say the least, uhm, challenging. Holly molly. You can only shower blessings on the soul that invented air conditioning, and then the schmo who figured out how to install it in cars. Reason why I mention this is cause solving the puzzle takes quite a bit of time, and well, there ain't no shade or escaping the insane heat in the wadi's in this part of the world. And seems to me that more than a few people cheated this one, but you will see for yourself when you visit it.
Anyway, once we solved the puzzle, we headed off to the indicated location, only to spend a further couple of hours reducing my official body water content from 75% to ... well... must have been close to 50%!! Damn, I can't remember having sweated (dang, what the heck is the plural of this - howz this for a guess) so friggin much! Two hours is a long time in the heat, and not many of you out there will really understand how hot it gets out here. Anyway, yet again, I digress!! We finally found the bugger hiding in not quite the expected location, with a little help from our friends (don't you just hear the Beatles now!!). After almost packing up, we decided to use one of our life-lines and phoned a friend, and he managed to indicate where we had misinterpreted the "corrected" instructions.... I am really not going to share anymore, cause I wouldn't want to deprive any other cachers out there of the fun experience we had trying to figure this one out. Anyway, it was a very satisfying experience, all in all. What a find! Plus the cache was wicked cool.
All in all though, almost all the caches were awesome. Really nice and packed full of interesting things.
One of my highlights of the day was finding the cache in Mahdah! It could only be more perfect if the final cache location was free of litter, oh my, was the place polluted! This is apparently a very popular location for the locals, and clearly they haven't learned the importance of looking after the environment. The garbage all over the place, obviously remnants of some or other get together, was just plain wrong. Wow! It reminds me of the formerly nice locations in South Africa that have become totally ruined by visitors.
All that aside, these are some of the photos I took on the way to that particular cache.
On the road to the cache!
Up the hill and down the hill... what an amazing view!
At the cache site, in the Wadi. Very nice, but if you look closely, you will see the spray painting on the boulders, and man, I just couldn't take a picture to the left/right/behind of here, it was just wrong.
We had lunch at the Hatta Fort Hotel, which was really cheap and not bad at all. We then went for some of the other caches, seemingly along the road. Oh my, where is a helicopter when you need one. Did some of the most insane mountain climbing ever, in the heat and everything. If I ever have to climb another Kilimanjaro wanna-be, I swear, I might just go postal!
The Hatta GOLF cache was the last one for the day, and while the cache is just plain amazing!! and that it was, the climb up was just too much to round out the day! Holy crap, I thought I was gonna pass out on the way up, and when we finally got there, we had no water on us and I was just dying for a drink. The stay up top was very short, although the view was just plain amazing. I hightailed it back to the car, 30 minutes later, I was just too happy to be back in the comfort of the well A/Ced car and even happier to be making our way back home!
Ten hours later, back at home, a shower was sooo in order, and what can I say, I am gonna sleep well tonight!
Wow, six of the Hatta area caches found today, all the ones we went for! (Even though we got really lucky on a couple of the caches, which could have taken us much much longer.) It was brilliant, with a nice relatively cool start to the day, with temperatures starting at 32 degrees and reaching a bearable 35 degrees at noon. It slowly started getting warmer from there on out, and finally reached around 42 degrees at around 4pm. So we were fairly lucky with the temperatures today.
I got to experience a whole new side of the UAE/Oman again today, seems every weekend we see something completely different.
One of the highlights this time around was my very first puzzle cache, Rubik Challenge, which was, well to say the least, uhm, challenging. Holly molly. You can only shower blessings on the soul that invented air conditioning, and then the schmo who figured out how to install it in cars. Reason why I mention this is cause solving the puzzle takes quite a bit of time, and well, there ain't no shade or escaping the insane heat in the wadi's in this part of the world. And seems to me that more than a few people cheated this one, but you will see for yourself when you visit it.
Anyway, once we solved the puzzle, we headed off to the indicated location, only to spend a further couple of hours reducing my official body water content from 75% to ... well... must have been close to 50%!! Damn, I can't remember having sweated (dang, what the heck is the plural of this - howz this for a guess) so friggin much! Two hours is a long time in the heat, and not many of you out there will really understand how hot it gets out here. Anyway, yet again, I digress!! We finally found the bugger hiding in not quite the expected location, with a little help from our friends (don't you just hear the Beatles now!!). After almost packing up, we decided to use one of our life-lines and phoned a friend, and he managed to indicate where we had misinterpreted the "corrected" instructions.... I am really not going to share anymore, cause I wouldn't want to deprive any other cachers out there of the fun experience we had trying to figure this one out. Anyway, it was a very satisfying experience, all in all. What a find! Plus the cache was wicked cool.
All in all though, almost all the caches were awesome. Really nice and packed full of interesting things.
One of my highlights of the day was finding the cache in Mahdah! It could only be more perfect if the final cache location was free of litter, oh my, was the place polluted! This is apparently a very popular location for the locals, and clearly they haven't learned the importance of looking after the environment. The garbage all over the place, obviously remnants of some or other get together, was just plain wrong. Wow! It reminds me of the formerly nice locations in South Africa that have become totally ruined by visitors.
All that aside, these are some of the photos I took on the way to that particular cache.
On the road to the cache!
Up the hill and down the hill... what an amazing view!
At the cache site, in the Wadi. Very nice, but if you look closely, you will see the spray painting on the boulders, and man, I just couldn't take a picture to the left/right/behind of here, it was just wrong.We had lunch at the Hatta Fort Hotel, which was really cheap and not bad at all. We then went for some of the other caches, seemingly along the road. Oh my, where is a helicopter when you need one. Did some of the most insane mountain climbing ever, in the heat and everything. If I ever have to climb another Kilimanjaro wanna-be, I swear, I might just go postal!
The Hatta GOLF cache was the last one for the day, and while the cache is just plain amazing!! and that it was, the climb up was just too much to round out the day! Holy crap, I thought I was gonna pass out on the way up, and when we finally got there, we had no water on us and I was just dying for a drink. The stay up top was very short, although the view was just plain amazing. I hightailed it back to the car, 30 minutes later, I was just too happy to be back in the comfort of the well A/Ced car and even happier to be making our way back home!
Ten hours later, back at home, a shower was sooo in order, and what can I say, I am gonna sleep well tonight!
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