Geocaching

Some of you may have heard of this already. For those who haven't, Geocaching is a world wide hobby.

Basically, there are people all over the world who decide to put a small container in some location (usually scenic and sometimes hard to get to.) It's contents are left up to the owner and can range from just a notebook to sign, to coins, to local souvenirs etc...

The owner then posts the coordinates of the geocache on the website and people who have GPS's can input them into the unit then go out and "hunt" for the container. If you find it, you can usually take a trinket in the container but you need to leave something else. That's perfect as we have some toonies and Canadian pins we brought with us.

Is it a sport? Probably not. But it's a really fun way to kill of few hours.

Jenni and I have just started this hobby since there are quite a few geocaches here in China (and it's a good excuse to make use of my GPS). We went out yesterday in search of GCPT6K, a cache located in Lu Xun Park here in Qingdao.

It was loads of fun. We walked at least 2 km to find this thing, then when you get close, since GPS's are usually only accurate to 5 or 6 meters, you have to go searching. We found this small film canister at the base of a tree under some rocks.
What was inside? A log sheet and 3 US coins. Well, I must say we were hoping for something more local but I guess it'll have to do. I picked up a quarter and left one of our Canadian pins. We sealed up the container again and I put it back where I found it for the next person.There's lot's more coming up and we'll probably try to hit a couple more before leaving China. Which by the way is sometime before the 18th!