What the Hell is Geocaching?

"What is Geocaching?" is a question I've heard a lot over the last week.  Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunt.  People hide containers around the place, and post the co-ordinates on the Internet.  People can use these co-ordinates to search for the containers with their GPS receivers.

So, what's in the containers?  It all depends.  All containers will have a log book, so that people can write down that they found the cache.  The smallest ones will have just the log, nothing more, but the larger ones often contain "swag" or "swaps", toys or trinkets that people can take from the cache.  The rule is that if you take something out, then you must leave something for the next person.  Common etiquette says that what you leave should be of equal or greater value than what you take.

I first heard about geocaching 4 or 5 years ago, when I read about it on a website somewhere.  It sounded interesting, but I didn't do anything about it, because I figured that no-one where I lived would be doing it.

Fast forward a couple of years to 2008, when I purchased a GPS for bushwalking.  As I was going through the features of my shiny GPS, I discovered it had a profile specifically set up for Geocaching.  It was enough to get me back on the 'Net, and searching for information of Caching in Australia.

I was rather surprised to find out that caching was quite popular, and that there were quite a few caches in my area.  So, I grabbed some co-ordinates, found a couple of caches, and then didn't do anything more.  According to my profile at geocaching.com.au, I didn't do any caching for 746 days, until I got back into it this year.

So, why the long break, and why the sudden enthusiasm again?  I guess it comes dow to a few things.  I got a bit discouraged after unsuccessfully trying to find a few caches here and there.  Plus, I didn't always have free time to go out and look for caches.

So why the hell start again?  To be honest, I can't answer that question.  A bit over a week ago, my Fiancé and I were preparing to head out for a drive into the mountains, just for something to do.  I don't know what put the idea in my head, but I thought "Hey, let's not go to Mountain 1, let's go to Mountain 2, and do some geocaching as well".  I still don't know what made me think of geocaching that day.

I'd like to report that we found all three caches hidden on said mountain, and that the success there got both of us hooked straight away.  Of course, this being real life, we found no caches at all.  It wasn't until a couple of days later that we got our first find.  I suspect that it was just a streak of stubbornness in me that made me keep going until I found a cache somewhere.

Of course, having found one cache, we went back to the website, and looked at all the unfound caches in our area.  There's a surprising amount out there, and I'm determined to find as many as I can.  I'm so determined that I've got a couple of geocaching apps on my iPhone, so that I can pick up any caches that I happen to be close to, should I feel like a bit of impromptu caching.