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Well I’m sure many of you have been hearing a lot about geocaching from me and my good friend Scott. It all started when I came across an article on the web about 5 places to almost die before you die (awesome I know). One of the 5 was talking about a geocache in Sweden that is supposed to be death defying getting to. So I started to wonder what is this geocaching? Well after a quick look on their website, I soon discovered it was, to quote a friend, “A big game of hide and seek for adults.” People hide caches all over the world and give GPS coordinates as to their locations. Some add clues and descriptions, and the odd one has a picture clue. So I thought this sounds pretty interesting and as Scott was out I decided to see what he thought, he thought the same as me. I did some searching and found there were plenty of caches in the UAE to get started with, and 1000s more in the UK just within 100 miles of my house! We didn’t hang around and got straight to finding two caches in the local Dubai area.
The
first cache was down an alleyway overlooking a mosque and the Burj Al Arab hotel. We parked up about 0.4 mile away from the location and decided to walk the rest of the way, big mistake. By the time we had reached the alley we were both dripping with sweat, however still in good spirits. The GPS led straight to the alley and it was down to the MKI eyeball to do the rest. The clue was to leave no stone unturned, so that’s exactly what we did, looking under each rock starting from opposite ends working into the middle. I eventually came across the cache which was a glasses case with the log book and an action figure inside. We were both chuffed to have the first find, especially as my t-shirt was now stuck to me, so it wasn’t in vain. I replaced the action figure with a key ring from the local police college that I had acquired, and we both signed the log book. After some photos of the mosque we walked back to the car laughing at how minging we both were.
The second cache was just a short drive up the road to
Safa park. This was my first time visiting the place and I was surprised how nice it was. There was grass, trees, flowers, a lake and plenty of areas to have BBQs etc, a big difference to the beaches and desert terrain. Again we were suffering under the sun, but thankfully there was a water machine just inside the park, and I proceeded to drink about a litre of water in less than a minute. A quick stop for a nice cold coke and an ice cream, and we made for the cache which was about 0.3 mile into the park. We came to the location and all we had to go on was the clue, there are 11 of them and the cache is in one of them. A bit vague, but we soon realised there was a patch of 11 palm trees in a bush area, so we began searching. Nothing. We spent a good 20 minutes looking around getting funny looks off passersby, and still nothing. Eventually we reluctantly gave up, convinced that we were looking in the right place and it had been taken, thus ending our first day of geocaching.
The next day we
went out for another cache, located on a beach, one I had never visited before. We parked up and walked past a small fishing post onto a sort of pier made from rocks and were looking for one of those rocks with 3 holes in it. It was quickly found and after dropping down in between the rocks I pulled out the cache. Again it was baking hot but we were prepared this time, wearing our beach attire. We laid out the contents and got some photos, and took out a geo coin. A geo coin is a trackable item that is logged on the website and you can follow its path after you deposit it in another cache. After returning the box back to its hiding place we dropped down into the beach which was empty and a lot cleaner than any I had visited previously. There we spent a couple of hours just chilling in the warm sea and enjoying the quiet. One thing we quickly realised, was that geocaching was very enjoyable to do, but was also good for having an excuse to visit and explore new places. It’s something we will both continue to do for
a long time, and I have already got some caches to find during my holiday in Las Vega/San Diego in the summer.
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