Geocaching madness

My sister recently put me onto this 'geocaching' game.  Its like a huge worldwide treasure hunt.  Members hide caches all over the world, upload the GPS co-ordinates to the web, you download them and you're away looking for the hidden treasure.  Its a bit techno, so it may not be for every whanau, you can get a geocaching application on your phone, and no matter where in the world you are, you can check if there is 'treasure' nearby.  I suppose you could print off the co-ordinates and navigate with a trusty compass and a good map but following a bleeping dot on a phone has much more visual, audio and techno appeal for today's generation of kids.  If you understand the bleeping dot that is.  More on that later.

My kids have already found many caches all over the North Shore, using their Aunty's iPhone (pooh) so they have the geocaching bug already.  Their mother's lack of a decent phone with adequate technical support has halted that bug for awhile.  Much to their disgust!  But my ANDROID phone is now geocaching compatible and I purposely saved the first whanau4life geocaching excursion for summer and my daughter's birthday.  She's the summer baby, she gets all the cool summer stuff.  We checked the website and Otaki has a few caches which was fantastic.  We picked the one along the Otaki riverbank.  I tell ya, its kind of cool to plan a treasure hunt, it has big kudos in my kids world and petrol and phone aside, is one of those relatively cheap whanau outings.  I was looking forward to it and the kids were pretty stoked too. 


OMG.  The bloody bleeping dot.  You know how you do geography at school and you study maps and keys?  The teacher tells you that blue is the universal symbol for water?  No brainer.  I did geography, relatively successfully I might add, and I had the map, the co-ordinates.  Geocaching?  I got this!!  I clicked the application on, got the co-ordinates and using the insipid techno voice of the GPS on my phone to navigate, we headed off. My son who had seen the map says "just go to the river Mum".  I'm like all anal and saying nooo....we have to follow the GPS. "Turn left".  Again he says, "just go to the river".  And again I persist with the insipid techno voice directions "turn right", and we get to - the river lol.  The ITV on the GPS says "2.5 kms" so we park up and start walking.  The Otaki river looks peaceful  on a beautiful summer's evening, we are all talking and chatting, laughing and watching the meandering river.  They have all learnt to swim in this river, I have many fond memories.  We check the map every now and then, it bleeps the closer you get to the treasure. "1.8km", the bleep is taking a longtime to bleep.  I kept seeing the blue ribbon on the map with a dot on the other side of it.  Suddenly the dot starts bleeping "You are here".  Here?!  I realise in horror thatMiss ITV is telling us we're here but the damn dot is bleeping over there somewhere.  I didn't make the connection until we were physically  right opposite the dot with the 'blue ribbon' of the Otaki River between us and the treasure, that we were on the wrong side of the river.  How do you tell a five year old you cant read a GPS map?  Or that you let some insipid techno voice override your common sense?  We've just walked 2.5kms and he just wants to get thedamn treasure!  I'm a Mum.  I winged it, bluffed my way out of it and said "who wants to throw stones in the river!!".

Now, if I had actually applied some logic, I would have realised that the GPS navigates, using the nearest roads to your destination, based on where you start from.  If I had actually read the map, the old fashioned way we were taught in geography, and applied my local knowledge of the Otaki area, I might have over-ridden the GPS directions and gone the right way!!  Lessons learned.  We trudged back to the carpark, laughing at being on the wrong side of the river (lots of nek minit jokes), and made plans to attack the 2.5km walk the next day.  As a consolation or a bonus I looked up another treasure and we found one down by the Waitohu reclamation ground, by the Otaki beach.  We headed over there, without Miss ITV thang's help and scrambled up the bank.  With the last of the summer light fading, my tired geocachers searched half-heartedly but the 5km walkbefore  had them beat.  They sat down dejectedly and failed to find the treasure.  My 5 year old declared he was tired and wanted to go home.  I was pretty gutted for them. 

We stopped to buy a birthday cake on the way home and my 8 year old says quietly "Mum, we suck at geocaching.".  We so do.  But we will head out again, and I will hopefully be more clued up and we will nail geocaching as a whanau.  Trials and tribulations, so they say.  Not everything is successful the first time around.  I might let them school me on what their Aunty did, and do a bit more research or at least reading of other's experiences and then we are going to dive straight back in that geocaching deep-end.  We have to, my sister is streaks ahead and "one, two three, four, I declare a geocaching war" has been set.  Geocaching game on.  The upside was the walk.  Otaki is so beautiful, the river so healing, and there is something about the sound of running water, on a still and glorious summer evening.  And my gorgeous children's laughter and chatter echoing across the land.  Memories are made of this. 

Selecting stones for throwing in the river, its the simple things for 5 year olds.

My keen, geocaching kids.  Smiling despite being on the wrong side of the river!