Posts Tagged ‘geocaching’

Hawaii’s New Hidden Treasures

The international phenomenon of geocaching has hit Hawaii. Residents and visitors alike put on their hiking boots and head into more or less challenging territory to find small boxes filled with a gift and a logbook.

“It’s like a high tech easter egg hunt,” says Alicia Greenwald, a Kane’ohe resident, of her new hobby. “It gets me off the couch and makes me do something really exciting.”

She finds the coordinates to a new location on the internet, and then uses her small GPS device to hunt down the treasure. There are approximately 900,000 of the waterproof containers hidden all over the world. About 500 are in Hawaii. Their number increases every month. The caches can be anywhere – from the slopes of Mt. Olomana to lava tubes on the Big Island, on beaches, in the rainforest, even in the water. The latest version is a cache in form of a small web camera. The finder has a trophy picture taken which is then instantly placed on the attached internet site.

The rules of the game are simple, and the game is free. Participants register on a website, for example on geocaching.com; they put a trinket and a logbook into a waterproof container, it can be Tupperware, a coffee can or anything that has a lid and withstands the elements. They hide it and publish a coded location on the website. The finders of the cache replace the gift with a new one and write their name with a friendly greeting in the logbook. Later they return to the website and list their success.

Pierre Michael came all the way from Switzerland to catch some winter sunshine and geocaches. “It’s such a great thing to do,” he says. “It gets you out into nature, to places that you’d never see and at the same time you can make new friends.”

Caching enthusiasts have quickly built a strong network on and offline. They exchange treasure hunting tips, reviews of gear and personal stories.

“Everyone wants to be a treasure hunter,” adds Pierre. “It’s a childhood dream and there is nothing more exciting than finding something that you really have to look and work for. It does not matter what is inside the box, there is no material value. It’s just about getting there and telling about it.”