Social Geocaching Day

Today was a different day! A lot of fun, doing the geocaching social style! My best mate, ToadNet and family (Mrs. ToadNet and ToadNet Jr.) joined us geocaching in the Hatta area. We kind of helped them get to and find some of the more challenging caches around that part of the UAE, and had a good excuse to go for the three new caches hidden out there.

I also had the opportunity to spend a little more time on photography, and managed to get some great photos along the way!

Ok, to be perfectly honest, for most of the previously found caches that we visited on ToadNet's behalf, I remained close to the cars and masterfully avoided climbing those much loved mountains! My other half, I swear she is part mountain goat or something, bounced up and down all these treacherous mountains like it was nothing.

So all in all, it was a great day. We set out at around 9:30am and headed straight for the Hatta area. As we approached the area we made a bee-line for Memories of Dubai. The cache is a deceptively easy cache to get to, considering all the other caches in the area, but is a great warm-up for geocaching in the area (being the first cache as you approach Hatta). Everyone dropped some form of trackable in this cache, so we all had to sit on the lid of the container and use some magic to close the cache container again! (It was bulging).

Then it was on to one of Phoenixdxb's caches that ToadNet needed to find. Pay it Forward, which is quite close to Memories of Dubai, is easy enough to get to if you make the right turns :)
Everyone took a nice stroll to the cache, and did the deed, while I remained behind taking pictures and worked on some creative photography.

(I managed to find some shade :))

(Toad Jnr and Mrs. Toad heading back from the hunt)

As you can see, we had a beautiful day to enjoy geocaching, and it was only around 36 degrees Celsius. After everyone did the necessary at Pay it Forward, we drove down along the base of the mountain to the next cache, or should I say first part of it. Arabian cache is quite a treasure of a cache. If you haven't done it yet, I highly recommend it, but do plan to spend at least 4 hours on this one cache hunt. It is essentially a multi-cache, and you just have to see the first cache container... its fabulous.

Now the reason I mention this is because Toad Snr. somehow managed to put it in his pocket while shifting things around in his hands. Somehow, no one noticed that the container was not put back where it was found... until everyone was back at the cars... after a loud groan from Toad Snr., he had to turn around and head back up the mountain to go a hide it again. While Toad Snr. ventured up the mountain it gave the rest of a chance to play the fool, and shoot the breeze.

Ok, it was just the two boys playing the fool :)

Fifteen minutes later, soaked in a healthy dose of sweat, he returned a slightly pinker shade of tomato! There is no denying the expression of triumph as he returns...

It was now time to replenish our fluids!


After everyone was suitably refreshed, we all piled into the cars, and headed back to the road onto the next cache. Checking the GPS was a bit of a pain, since all the ones I had already found were no longer showing up in the "find geocaches" menu, and I didn't want to miss any along the way that Toad may not yet have found. Having isolated the next candidate, Hatta's GOLF cache, we plotted our course. For a change we drove right past it before realizing we had to make a U-turn to head back in the correct general direction. Letting Toad and family take the lead, cause they hadn't found it yet, was entertaining, as we knew exactly where we should have been going. Funny to watch someone else, and realize that what they are doing is exactly what you were doing the first time you tried to find it. Straight down here... a little to the right... no, wait and little to the left... back a bit... oops, wrong turn... etc.

Now, along the way to the final cache location, we came across a bush that was just plain full of garbage. How on earth so much rubbish can end up littering a location seemingly in the middle of nowhere is beyond me... and even worse, is the apparent lack of concern for the environment prevalent in the region. I say this broad sweeping statement, but I have been to many remote locations in the UAE, and have often encountered piles of rubbish just left behind or thrown out in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, we finally got the parking spot as close to the cache as possible. Now, there wasn't a snowflakes chance in hell that I was going to do this climb again. I gracefully bowed out and volunteered to keep Mrs. Toad and Toad Jnr. company with Phoenixdxb (aka Mountain Goat) and Toad Snr. went ahead a scaled the mountain.

And so TheToadNet and Phoenixdxb set off up yet another mountain. TheToadNet was lucky to be able to walk back down again, without flight-for-live or air rescue assistance, as we watched him take a tumble up in the mountain. Apparently his head just missed a rock, and it could have been very ugly. Thankfully, no injuries sustained, and the two mountain jockeys did their business and returned about an hour later.

In the meantime, Toad Jnr reckoned he looks cool behind the wheel!

This last one was caught just after he was trying to show me how he had lost his first tooth! Many unflattering posses later, I caught him checking to see if he could see the gap left by the missing tooth.

After this cache, we decided it was time to head out for some lunch... it was already after 1pm and it was the first day of Eid Al Fitr. We figured the only place to really find lunch within a reasonable distance was the Hatta Fort Hotel. The food there is good, and really cheap. Apparently, everyone else in the area also thought so :) My goodness, there were a lot of cars, had to pay a gate fee, and the parking lot was very busy. Thankfully though, we only had to wait about 10 minutes to get a table in the restaurant. And as usual the meal was very nice, and everyone manage to restore themselves to a normal color, and adequately rehydrate themselves.

Near 3pm, I suggested I would lead the way, because I had, via Google Earth, found a spot I wanted to hide a cache. After getting lost for about half an hour, and ending up right where we started, I decided to give this one a skip, and instead focus on getting the other caches, that were just over the border in Oman.

We first made a stop at one of the new caches in the area, This & That. Yay, another find... but my goodness, this place was dangerous and disgusting. The sheer volume of flies around the cache area says it all! This is one of those spots frequented and popular by the locals, which was apparent by all the cars with blacked out windows (one parked right under the cache site). It was really busy here today, and we lucked out because there was a tree that was obscuring the cache site from one of the parked cars. Thankfully, I was also wearing my hiking boots, so as to avoid cuts from the shards of glass spread all over the place. Broken Heinekin bottles on the mountain side, shards sticking out of the sand... it really is a disgrace!

Anyway... it was a relatively quick find, and the cache had some nice goodies in it! I liked the skeleton travel bugs and was no time in snapping up Fatso!

We dashed back to the cars to escape the flies that were just everywhere, and then headed down the road to the mini border post crossing into Oman. It was manned for once, but they were only checking for Oman car insurance. We then carried on down the road to Grand Stand, which was just wonderful.

Wow, the view/location was fantastic. Finding the cache was a little challenging as the coordinates on the GPSs (we had 3) were a little off seemingly, and after a thorough search of the surroundings, TheToadNet found the cache! It was nice a big! Full of goodies all sports related. Sadly, it was missing a mini outfit of the soon to be Rugby World Cup champions... (hint: not England!)... because that would have been mine!

After everyone had signed the log and made their trades, we drove down another 2 km to Hatta's LOVE cache which Toad Jnr found all by himself (with a little help from dad :)). We had already found this one, so it was just a quick, and very nice find for the Toad family (that really does sound wrong... I wonder what on earth inspired Toad Snr. to use Toad as a nick?).

After this, it was time to head home, as the sun had started setting. We originally wanted to got for Pink Rock, which is in the desert, so Toad Snr. could try his hand at desert driving, but the day got away from us, and dune bashing in the dark is no fun!

It was a great day, fun was had all round... and it was now time to head home and rest up for my other favorite past-time the following day... visiting the Hard Rock Cafe when Shine (the band) is in town.

Watch this space next week, because Friday coming is the UAE Cachers event, so it should be interesting!

4 Day Weekend

Yeah baby, yeah! It's a four day weekend this weekend, so expect a lot of news after this weekend!

The Mountains To The Desert

What a wonderful day! Bearing in mind that we had a kinda late start, we only really hit the road at around 10:30am.

The plan was to go for the caches hidden in the desert and the more remote locations, so it was necessary to take at least two cars (you know, in case one gets horribly stuck, etc). We also figured we should go for some of the newer caches hidden in the Dubai/Sharjah area, and we decided to get those out of the way first.

We started our adventure be visiting Zabeel Park. There are currently two caches hidden in Zabeel Park, a couple of hundred meters apart, namely Purple Rain Cache and Za'abeel Park. The geocaching fairy was on our side help us navigate the various detours and roads, right to the parking lot of the park. Zabeel Park is really beautiful and very nicely presented. I personally preferred visiting this particular park to Creek Park, but to each their own. Zabeel Park is totally different but no less of a wonder, considering the arid and unfriendly nature of a desert climate.




While entering Zabeel Park, we encountered a family just leaving, and they looked suspiciously like they may be fellow geocachers (I don't know, I reckon the GPS in hand is usually a dead give away!). I think they were thinking the same thing when they saw us, because as we approached each other we came to a stop, and just said, "Geocachers?". No surprises, they were, and they were none other than michaeldb (the De Beer family), the first geocachers we have met on the job! Although on this particular day, there were a whole bunch of cachers going for the new caches in Zabeel Park, and we must have narrowly missed the others! It was nice meeting some of the folks that play in this part of the world, and was not really surprised to find they were from South Africa (I reckon SA is representing half the cachers in the UAE).

From here we decided to go for the two caches not so far away, but bordering on Sharjah and in still undeveloped areas (though that will no doubt change very soon). So it was Pennywise and Pin-Head, both easy enough to get to, and fairly convenient as caches go. With "Casper", my trusty Prado, I had no problem parking practically on top of the cache sites :).

No here is where we had a little trouble, and I reckon the geocaching fairy had to dash off and help one of the other cachers in the area. We found the two caches easy enough, but from Pennywise, the plan was to catch the main road up to the desert and end up near Fossil Rock. Problem was that there was no obvious connection between the road that takes you to Pennywise, and the main road seemingly just 500m further. Now, I was NOT going to drive all the way back to catch another road that led to the road, and do another 30 km detour. Oh no. So off road we went again, travelling on a convenient service "path/road" that ran along the power lines. Eventually we got to the end and there was a nice spot for us to navigate our ways onto the main road! Having spared ourselves a 30 km detour, and having still been heading in the right direction, I was well chuffed.

We also spotted an interesting site. A couple of camels having lunch.


Anyway, we carried on for about 50km or so, until we were within a reasonable distance to Sand Track (Desert Challenge Yellow Key). As we were looking for a way into the desert we realised that the other two caches were now getting closer, and we eventually found a dirt road leading from the main road that looked to be heading in the right direction. So we ended up heading smack dab in the middle of Live Once in Al Maliha and Fossil Rock, with Sand Track (Desert Challenge Yellow Key) now some 10 km ahead of us. We opted to start with Live Once in Al Maliha as we reckoned this would be a quick one, but oh boy, were we wrong.

The problem with these mountain caches, in particular the ones NOT on the summit, is that the mountain tends to block your GPS reception. So, while you can get to the general vicinity of the geocache, you basically have about a 30 meter radius to search in - if you are lucky. Also, being the spur of the moment cachers that we are, we didn't really do any research on some of these caches, we kind of go for them as they pop up on the GPS. BIG mistake on this one. We climbed this ridiculous mountain (I do not like mountain climbing, climbing a hill pisses me off :) - this mountain wasn't too bad... but I could really do without). Let me add some photos to illustrate.

Anyway, we spent about 45 minutes climbing all over the place looking for any tell tale cache hiding spots. Alas, we just couldn't find anything. So I then decided to go back to the car and consult the oracle, GPXSonar. I swear, I love my oracle with all the add-ons... firstly, its paperless caching (I am a big fan of this, I don't believe any activity promoting the well-being of our environment would go well with wiping out forests), secondly, I have access to all the info that is on the actual site, off-line, including the spoiler pics :). Have reviewed the hints and checked some of the spoilers, I passed the information along to my better half still on top of the mountain. A joint effort finally got us in the right location, and tada!!!!

Phew, we spent over an hour and a half at this cache and we still hadn't even start the desert stuff. But now it was on to Fossil Rock...

It's the mountain outcropping in the middle at the top. You can also see our cars down there, just so you have an indication of how far up the cache was hidden. As you can see it is well surrounded by desert, so after driving back and forth looking for an easier was in, we deflated the tires and took the plunge. Now this was my first dune bashing session in about 8 months, so I was a little weary (till I get my sand driving instincts going). And this is probably the worst place to cut you teeth on dune bashing - I would not recommend starting your dune bashing experiences here, it was pretty hairy. After navigating the various dunes we headed for the mountain, and I must say it is pretty challenging trying to get up a sand dune mountain! But we made it!


The view from up here was amazing! Well worth navigating the dunes and taking the challenge. On to the hunt. After spending 30 minutes scouring the mountain side, getting send from one end to the other, I opted to consult my trusty oracle of all things cache! And low and behold, US-A-Rabia posted updated coordinates (which are usually spot on). So while my better half was up on the mountain, looking in all the holes, I took the updated coordinates, and was pleasantly surprised to find the cache just a few meters from the "road", and not in the mountain (did I mention how I loathe mountain climbing yet?). Ding Ding! This was a great cache location, but we were starting to get a little concerned as time was ticking by and we were rapidly approaching 4pm (sun sets at about 6:30pm and you don't want to get stranded in the desert in the dark).

So we wasted no time and hit the dunes in no time! We still needed to find two caches which were both in the middle of the desert. So no on to Sand Track (Desert Challenge Yellow Key), the prize and ultimate goal for today. We tried to find the easiest way to get as close to the cache as possible without actually driving straight through the dunes (cause its so time consuming). We found a road running parallel to the mountain range in the picture above, which took us about 5km closer to the cache. Then we encountered a tarred road with, oh my goodness I wet my pants... PORSCHEs galor parked by the side of the road!!!

... and they just started pulling off as we were parked here contemplating our next action! Arrrr arrrr arrr! (From Tim Allen's Tool Time - the primal grunt :)). Porsche is my ultimate car, always has been and this was just beautiful!! There were even a couple of GT3 RS's in there!!

Anyway, after recomposing ourselves, we set off trying to edge closer to the cache, minimizing the amount of dune bashing we needed to do to get to the cache - as light was rapidly fading! We eventually found a good spot to hit the dunes again, and only needed to do about 3 km or so to the cache! Brilliant!

Yeeeeehaaaaaa! I had strangely forgotten how much fun dune bashing is!

... breath-taking!

And then we got to the cache, and parked right next to it!!! Yay, #4 of 5 of the Desert Challenge!

I really enjoyed going for this one, and it was a thoroughly rewarding and fun experience - not insanely stupid and risky dunes to traverse, just plain fun!

As you can see the sun was rapidly starting to set and here is the kicker... a whopping 10 km to Pink Rock. And all desert between! Oh boy, but we really needed to go for this one! So we wasted no time, in the cars and off we set.

Oh my, only half way there, and there goes the sun!! And this also marks the last of the photos!

We were rejoined by the geocaching fairy who helped us find a well traveled stretch of desert heading in the general direction we needed to... we closed the gap very quickly, in a matter of minutes we were within a kilometer of the cache!! But now we got to the general Pink Rock area, and we needed to start heading up hill again! And the light was almost completely gone. The dunes heading up hill are generally quite treacherous, and can be quite dangerous - multiply by a thousand in the dark. And worst of all, you don't want to get stuck in the sand in the dark, because there will be no help until the next day.

Anyway, we made it about half way up before I nearly got stuck in some really soft sand, so I reversed out, turned the car around, pointed it downhill and parked. It was only 400m to the cache, so we figured, instead of taking any more chances, to make a run for it! Ok, it was more like a hobble, skip, limp, as the sand was really soft! But we got to the general location of the cache soon enough, but it was now dark. Being ever prepared, I whipped out my flashlight, and found a suspicious stack of rocks in a hole in the side of the mountain. What an ingenious cache stash location, like it was made to hold the container! Brilliant!

Eek! Now it was pitch dark, literally, and dune bashing in the dark is not so much fun. You can't really see the dunes and what they are doing - do they drop sharply, can you make it over it safely, if I go there then where do I go next... etc. There is no way we could even think of attempting to forge a new path towards the main road in the distance. Really, it would take all night. So I opted to retracing our route (which was reliable and safe from recent experience), so we followed our tracks back to the well traveled path through the desert and then carried on following it in the direction of the main road.

After a couple of "oh no, where did the road go" experiences, we finally made it to Big Red (a massive sand dune) that we knew to be right next to the main road. Phew, we made it!

We really must be geocaching addicts and slightly insane, to have attempted dune bashing in the dark, but all in all, this was a fantastic day! Eight geocaches found, and so much fun hunting for them!

Caching Around Dibba

Well, no jokes, this was a truly awesome outing! But, I must say, the last bit was a little terrifying!

We clearly made up for not caching last weekend, and went all out to find all the caches we had previously missed in the Dibba area, and at the same time ensuring that we didn't need to make this trek for a while! (Well, at least till the rains come along, cause some of these cache hunts must be awesome with water in the wadis).

No less than seven caches found! Wooohooo! And boy, did we have luck on our side (The Geocaching Fairy and her geo-dust)! My trusty Prado went to places and did things I just cannot believe it could do!

After setting out at around 10 am, we started the trip heading for Dibba. As we were nearing our targeted area for caching today, I did a quick check and noticed that there was still a cache "hidden" that we couldn't find last time. Last time also being 50 degrees, and today being a little cooler at 42. The cache Dibba's Friday Market by Liveonce was not going to get away from me again!! A wouldn't you know it, it took less than 5 minutes to find!! I honestly didn't believe we would find the cache, so I was a little unprepared - no goodies to put in - but that will no doubt be fixed one of these days.

It was then off to the three caches, seemingly close together and the first being only 9km away! So we set off following the GPS and reading the instructions for Winding Wadi (Desert Challenge Red Key)! It quickly became apparent that we were going to need to drive all the way around to get to the entry point indicated by Desert Trekker in the Winding Wadi cache description. Conveniently, we had to pass right by the other two caches : Surrounded! and Wadi Bashing. Once, at Wadi Bashing, it was apparently only 4.97 km to Winding Wadi! Sweet!

Drove to the end of the tarred road, and then carried on off-road! And I gotta say that the scenery along the route was fantastic. I keep wondering how Desert Trekker keeps finding these exotic locations! So many of them are so out of the way, and yet so wonderfully creative. Let me put this trek in perspective for you all:




Mountain climbing goat. The goat was actually level with us when we stopped, but then decided to climb up the side of the mountain to get out of reach, so to speak.
Not to say that it wasn't very interested in what we were up to!! It was incredible to see this creature gracefully scale the side of the mountain like it was nothing. It would take me the better part of the day!!



What I really love about these trips is the stark contrasts you encounter. For huge stretches you will see nothing but rock and gravel. Then you encounter an oasis of sorts, then nothing again. The most astounding experience if finding homes along these "wadis" and some of them are not too shabby. Mind you we haven't even arrived at the cache site yet.

We finally reached the approximate cache location, after a bit of a detour - as we, along with our caching predecessors, took the now legendary and infamous "wrong" turn and had to back-track quite a bit - about one and a half hours later. Calling this a winding wadi is an understatement if I ever heard one!

Sadly, the cache contents were a little meager, and I was a little short on caching bait, which I will most certainly return to contribute (especially when the rainy season hits). There are no words to express how much I recommend going for this cache, this has to be one of my favorites. While we were at the cache site, we had someone pull up right behind "Casper the friendly 4x4", and we were certain they were fellow cachers, because we passed them on the way back from the wrong turn. Turns out they were just curious about where we were going, and they were Dutch and Belgian (Dubai Waterfront) contractors exploring on their day off.


Poor "Casper" took a beating on this trip, but its just one of those days that you realize that the Prado is just one of the best cars you could ever buy!

(Casper in the wadi pic in the first photo of this blog)

Of course, we got to enjoy the scenery on the way out, and about an hour later we were on track heading for Keyring cache. The was a fairly straight forward cache find, though my "athletic" frame (Hey, I spent quite a bit of cash establishing my well defined figure), had some trouble couping with the loose rock and limited solid footing! I really thought I was going to see my ass (excuse my french, but butt just doesn't work in that expression), but thankfully I escaped the experience unscathed! The time was rapidly approaching 5 pm now, and as we were rushed trying to take advantage of daylight, we seem to have neglected taking scenic photos.

Now, let me put something else into perspective. We originally just planned to do one or two caches out there. So we hadn't read all the cache entries and details and "stuff"! So we basically were going on GPS entries alone. Now, I had read the entry for ME4x4 No1, purely because we had tried this before and failed miserably. So, we had to decide what we were going to do... darkness approaching at a rapid pace and all that. Needless to say, I remember there were two caches in the same "wadi", so it was a no brainer for me :)

So it was decided! We were going for them!

Oh my! ME4x4 No1 was doable, purely because the Geocaching Fairy showered us with geo-dust on this marvelous day! We found a brand spanking new, freshly tarred road (that we took on a hope and a prayer) that led us right to the base of the mountain, and path/road/... you can't really call it either of those, cause it was BAD! Don't do this at night mind you, life is too short! Anyway, in the lowest gear, crawling along, desperately needing a kidney-belt, we finally made it to the summit just before the sun started setting. And oh my... the view was just breath-taking! Again, a picture says a thousand words...





Yeah, I know it looks like there is plenty of daylight left, but there wasn't. We rushed off from this cache, determined to find our last of the day: Wadi Asimah. We basically had daylight (thankfully) until we got to the bottom of this mountain, and once again, we were navigating the wadis. This is were the fun ended and the nightmare began!

Holy crap! (Excuse my french again... but holy crap!) I will spare you some of the details of this last bit of our adventure... well, because it would require many way more colorful expletives to describe the experience!! At one point, I was thinking to myself - "We are so going to get stuck and end up spending the night here!". Now, I have experienced some things in my 34 years, but I can tell you there are few words to describe driving in wadis in total darkness (experiencing full on bone-jarring 4x4ing), with only the cars headlights to guide you along. You couldn't even see the sides of the wadi, and I often wondered "What is that... could that be an exit? A way out? Another road that we should be on?" Again, our lady of Geocaching luck was on our side, because as we were about to start panicking, we came around the bend that led us to within a few meters of the cache (a couple of hours later). Being ever vigilant and absurdly prepared, I had a flashlight in my day-to-day bag (don't ask, apparently I am a touch paranoid). We used it to find the "shiny" cache container in no time, and conveniently, not being able to see your surroundings makes the trek up and down so much easier! :)

Greatest respect to the cache owners of this wonderful cache though. It is a great cache location, but certainly not suitable at night! And unfortunately our bones were still shaking from the hectic drive up to this point, and we didn't manage to contribute anything to the cache... we just wanted to escape this nightmare and find civilization. We shall return however, and do the necessary to inspire other cachers to visit this cache.

Unbelievably, as bad as we thought it had been so far (again, way too many expletives required to describe this experience), it was nothing compared to what lay ahead... in total darkness! All I can say is that "Casper" coped very well, and made me proud! Every time we thought we had finally passed the worst of it another challenge presented itself! At just about 8:30 pm we finally escaped the nightmare and encountered a settlement with electricity (a good sign!!!). We were only too happy to finally hit the road home!

Phew, we made it. Thank goodness I had my better half, phoenixdxb, to keep me sane on this hectic trip!

Next week promises to be equally challenging as we plan to take on the desert caches!

First Cache Free Weekend

Wow, this is really the first geocaching free weekend due to having a fairly busy schedule. Today was out due to snowboarding and the Rugby World Cup, yesterday we were staying with friends, swimming a lot!

We are going to have to make up for it next weekend!