Hidden at the base of a tree, loose dirt and dried branches covered a small green box. While the container housed cheap trinkets — a teddy bear eraser, two key chains, a strand of puka shells and a bookmark of
Hidden at the base of a tree, loose dirt and dried branches covered a small green box. While the container housed cheap trinkets — a teddy bear eraser, two key chains, a strand of puka shells and a bookmark of Seattle’s skyline — I felt like I just uncovered Blackbeard’s long-lost treasure.
I had just found my very first geocache.
Geocaching is a high-tech scavenger hunt. People use GPS coordinates to hunt for plastic containers. These containers range anywhere from a film canister to plastic buckets. Inside, there’s a logbook and small trinkets and toys of very little value.
An important rule of geocaching is if you take an item, you must deposit one back into the cache that is of equal or greater value.
I dropped a plastic ring in the first geocache I found at the Keahua Arboretum, then took a key chain in return (which I deposited in a different cache in Po‘ipu).
Some of these caches are relatively easy to find, while others require four-wheel drive capability and sloshing through a jungle.
As I began hunting for more of these caches, the real reward was the pleasure of discovering new places and the beautiful scenery along the way.
They’ve led me to an unkempt Japanese cemetery in Wailua, a vista to watch whales in Lihu‘e, an old cane highway and new hiking trails around (and through) the island.
The easiest way to find these stashes is by using a cell phone. Most smart phones are enabled with GPS technology. I use an application created by Groundspeak to track the coordinates for each cache.
While being spoon-fed exact coordinates seems like a no-brainer, geocaching is deceptively challenging.
Most of the time, you can’t directly navigate your way to a cache.
The containers are very cleverly hidden. I have discovered caches hidden under a pile of rocks, inside a rusted refrigerator and covered by thorny brush.
I gave up searching for a cache hidden at Lydgate Beach Park because it led me to a muddy stream surrounded by a thicket of trees adjacent to Wailua Golf Course.
While geocaching isn’t a new pastime, it certainly is a fun one. It all started in 2000 when Dave Ulmer of Portland, Ore. hid the first geocache.
Ulmer wrote:
“I’m thinking of burying a five gallon plastic bucket with a lid at the stash point. Putting in some stuff. Adding a logbook and pencil so visitors can record their find … Make your own stash in a unique location, put in some stuff and a logbook. Post the location on the Internet. Soon we will have thousands of stashes all over the world to go searching for. Have fun!”
Currently, there are more than 1.2 million caches worldwide, 90 of them on Kaua‘i.
Happy hunting.
• Andrea Frainier, lifestyle writer, can be reached at 245-3681, ext. 257 or afrainier@
thegardenisland.com.
