Posts Tagged ‘geocaching’

More geocaching – urban geocaching

Friday, July 18th, 2008

Continuing the caches hunting reports :-)

This week me and Yuri went to Ibirapuera Garden, the main idea was to talk and to take the dust out of our skateboards, BUT I remembered that there were at least two caches there :P

We found both, actually it was very easy to find them. It was Yuri’s first geocaching experience and we decided to search another one near, but outside Ibirapuera. The chosen one was Cedro do Líbano, near enough to go with our vehicles (a skateboard and a long skateboard :P ). It was getting dark and the place where the cache is hidden did not help us. The cache must be very well hidden or it is not there anymore, we looked thought the place for 30 minutes and did not found it :-( ‘ll probably be back to search it again :)

Urban geocaching is very nice because of the curious people asking what you are doing with a GPS device looking for something :P They seem like the idea when you explain what geocaching is!

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Beach geocaching – Ubatuba!

Friday, July 18th, 2008

As some of my friends seemed to like Geocaching I decided to keep they (and you reading this post) updated with my searches for treasures :P

Last Saturday, July 12th (right?? :P ), I was iin Ubatuba (as I’ve already said in my last post about my GSoC project status). Looking Geocaching.com I’ve found a Multi-cache there (ok, I didn’t found it myself but someone pointed me two caches in Ubatuba). It’s the Capricorni Tropicus cache. What’s the difference between a normal cache and a multi-cache? Well, the multi-cache is a cache with multiple coordinates. The first one (the one you will find looking Geocaching.com) will point to a place where you will find tips and steps to find the new coordinates and so on.

To make it short, the coordinates pointed to Ubatuba’s downtown, there I’ve found the next steps and solved the “puzzle” to find the new coordinates. They pointed to a place that I’ve already knew (a bit), near to a beach called (should I mention the name here? :P ). If you visit Ubatuba someday you MUST go to that beach… and bring your dive equipment :P ! Well, to reach that beach you go through a road (in very bad conditions) and stop your car near to a trail. The road goes on and I never had the chance (and the curiosity) to continue on it to see where it would take. But the coordinates pointed to the end of this road :-)

Well, after reaching the end of the road and following the hints I started to follow a trail that took me to some rocks near the sea. The place is very beautiful! You have a scenic view from Ubatuba :-) My GPS was telling that the cache was near, about 40 meters on the rocks. I left my stuff with my grandfather (yes, he was hunting with me) and started to “walk” on the rocks. After reaching the right spot i started looking through the fences, rocks and everything.

Sadly I did not found it :( I’m not sure if it is still there ’cause since last September no one found it. Anyway, the place worths the visit. It’s very calm and peaceful!

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Treasure Hunting + GPS = Geocaching

Thursday, July 10th, 2008

Last Thursday, July 7th 8th (thanks Rodrigo), I was looking for some new apps that uses the GPS feature of my Nokia N95 phone and found something more interesting than a software, a treasure hunting game played by lots of people using GPS devices around the world!

The game is called Geocaching and exists since 2000 when David Ulmer decided to hide a “treasure” and made public it’s exact coordinates in an internet forum for GPS users. After three days someone found the treasure and then another one and the Geocaching was created :)

Basically you choose a “cache” (there are many sites with lists of caches around the world, the biggest one is www.geocaching.com), set up you GPS and start the hunt!

Well, as July 9th is holiday here in São Paulo I decided to search for a cache. Me and three friends (Thiago, Ricardo and Pessoal :P ) went to Serra da Cantareira to find the Pedra Grande cache :-)

After some walk (approximately 3.5 km) we were at an altitude of 1010m, what a view from São Paulo!

The cache was well hidden and we took some minutes to find it. The Geocaching rules are simple, if you find the cache you should take a gift from it and leave another for the next geocacher. You also should sign the logbook (if any) :)

We took a plastic dinosaur and an euro coin and left a Firefox tattoo (free software for geocachers, yeah!), a São Paulo train ticker, a public phone card and a card from Ricardo’s music group.

After finding the cache you should also make an entry in the site (geocaching.com for example) talking about you experience.

It was great and a really different activity. I will try to find more caches next weekends!

If you have a GPS unit, go find some caches!

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