After claiming the FTF on the new cache to the North East, the geohound and I continued our walk with a wander through thy
woods, eventually finding ourselves near this gate. I’d nearly attempted this cache during a previous visit to these woods but IIRC was dragged right past it by impatient dogs,
children, or both. 😂
Today, though, it was a QEF for the doggo and I. Fun container and a good size too, FP awarded. TFTC!
Woke this morning slightly hungover and figured a nice walk with the geopup might help me feel better. And what an opportunity: a brand new cache only a short way from home!
Jumped in the car and zipped up to Church Hanborough, parking near the cemetery/allotments because the church bells were ringing and all the parking spots nearer to the centre of thy
village were occupied by churchgoers. Walked up the paths to the GZ and had sight of the cache’s shiny container before we were even there. Retrieval was quick and easy, but we had to
wait a while before we could return it to it’s hiding place because a large group of dog walkers (one of whom was holding court on how he was confident that Donald Trump would soon
“dismantle the Deep State” 🙄) were passing.
Checked in on this cache while on a dog walk to ensure the Storm Éowyn hadn’t trashed it. Good news: it’s fine! I need to update the cache description to reflect that the speed limit
here is now 20mph, though!
I’ve been on holiday on the islands of Trinidad & Tobago this week. These island nations span graticules that are dominated by the Caribbean and Atlantic Oceans, so it’s little wonder
there’s never been an attempted geohashing expedition in them. So when a hashpoint popped-up in a possibly-accessible location, I had to go for it!
For additional context: Trinidad & Tobago is currently under a state of
emergency as gang warfare and an escalating murder rate has reached a peak. It’s probably ill-advised to go far off the beaten track, especially as somebody who’s clearly a foreign
tourist. The violence and danger is especially prevalent in and around parts of nearby Port of Spain.
As a result, my partner Ruth (wisely) agreed to drive with me to the GZ strictly under the understanding that we’d turn back at a moment’s notice if anything looked remotely sketchy,
and we’d take every precaution on the way to, from, and at the hashpoint area (e.g. keeping car doors locked when travelling and not getting out unless necessary and safe to do so,
keeping valuables hidden out of sight, knowing the location of the nearest police station at any time, etc.).
I don’t have my regular geohashing kit with me, but I’ve got a smartphone, uLogger sending 5-minute GPS location pings (and the ability to send a location when I press a button in the
app, for proof later), and a little bravery, so here we go…
Expedition
Our plane from Tobago landed around 15:20 local time, following an ahead-of-schedule flight assisted by a tailwind from the Atlantic side. We disembarked, collected our bags, and
proceeded to pick up a hire car.
Our Caribbean Airlines aircraft, landed at Piarco airport.
Our original plan for our stay in Trinidad had been to drive up to an AirBnB near 10.743817, -61.514248 on Paramin, one of Tobago’s highest summits. However,
our experience of driving up Mount Dillon on Tobago earlier in the week showed us that the rural
mountain roads around here can be terrifyingly dangerous for non-locals1,
and so we chickened out and investigated the possibility of arranging a last-minute stay at a lodge on the edge of the rainforest in Gran Couva, or else failing that a fallback plan of
a conventional tourist-centric hotel in the North of Port of Spain.
By this point, we’d determined that the hashpoint was in the old sugar growing region of Caroni, in which our originally-intended accommodation at Gran Couva could be found, and so it
seemed feasible that we might be able to safely deviate from our route only a little to get to the hashpoint before reaching our beds. We were particularly keen to be at a place of
known safety before the sun set, here in an unusual part of an unfamiliar country! So when the owner of our proposed lodge in Gran Couva called to say that he couldn’t accept our
last-minute booking on account of ongoing renovations to his property, we had to quickly arrange ourself a room at our backup hotel.
This put us in an awkward position: now the hashpoint really wasn’t anything-like on the way from the airport to where we’d be staying, and we’d doubtless be spending longer
than we’d like to be on the road and increasing the risk that we’d be out after dark. I reassured Ruth, whose appetite for risk is somewhat lower than mine, that if we set out for the
hashpoint and anything seemed “off” we could turn around at any time, and we began our journey.
Putting a brave/excited face on as we set off in our rental car.
Boosted by her experience of driving on Tobago, Ruth continued to show her rapidly-developing Trinbagonian road skills2.
Driving down a network of crisscrossing roads.
Despite increasingly heavy traffic on our minor roads, possibly resulting from a crash that had occurred on the Southbound carriageway of the nearby Uriah Butler Highway which was
causing drivers to seek a shortcut through the suburbs, we made reasonable time, and were soon in the vicinity of the hashpoint: a mixed-use residential/light commercial estate of the
kind that apparently sprung up in places that were, until very late in the 20th century, lands used for sugar cane plantations.
At this point, the maps started to become less and less useful: Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, and Bing Maps completely disagreed as to whether we were driving on Bhagan Trace, Cemetery
Street, or Roy Gobin Fifth Avenue, as well as disagreeing on whether we were driving into a cul-de-sac or whether it was possible to loop around at the end to return back to the main
roads. It was now almost 17:00 and we were greeted by a large number of cars coming out of the narrow street in the opposite direction to us, going in, and squeezing past us: presumably
workers from one of the businesses down here going home for the evening.
There are highways we’d been recommended to avoid because of the safety situation here, but this one was okay.
My GPS flickered as it tried to make sense of the patchwork of streets, and I asked Ruth to slow down and pull over a couple of times until I was sure that we’d gotten as close as we
could, by road. Looking out of my window, I saw the empty lot that I’d scouted from satellite photography, but it was hopelessly overgrown. If the hashpoint was within it, it’d take
hours of work and a machete to cut through. The circle of uncertainty jumped around as I tried to finalise the signal without daring to do the obvious thing of holding my phone outside
the car window. A handful of locals watched us, the strange white folks sitting in a new car, as I poked at my devices in an effort to check if we were within the circle, or at least if
we would be when, imminently, we were forced to park even closer to the side to let a larger vehicle force its way through next to us!
Pulled up at the hashpoint.
At the point at which I thought we’d made it, I hit the “save waypoint” at 17:06 button and instructed Ruth to drive on. We turned in the road and I started navigating us to our hotel,
only thinking to look at the final location I’d tagged later, when we felt safer. We drove back into Port of Spain avoiding Laventille (another zone we’d been particularly recommended
to stay away from) while I resisted the urge to double-check my tracklog, instead focussing on trying to provide solid directions through not-always-signposted streets: we had a wrong
turning at one point when we came off the highway at Bamboo Settlement No. 1 (10.627952, -61.429083) but thankfully this was an easy mistake to course-correct from.
View of the hashpoint again as we turn to go home
It was only when I looked at my tracklog, later, that I discovered that the point I’d tagged was exactly 8.59 metres from the hashpoint, plus or minus a circle of uncertainty of… 9
metres. Amazingly, we’d succeeded without even being certain we’d done so. Having failed to get a silly grin photo at the hashpoint, we sufficed to get one while we drank
celebratory Prosecco and ate tapas on the rooftop bar of our hotel, looking down on the beautiful bay and imposing mountains of this beautiful if intimidating island.
Silly drinky grins atop our hotel North of Port of Spain
Tracklog
I didn’t bring my primary GPSr, but my phone keeps a general-purpose tracklog at ~5min/50m intervals, and when I
prompt it to. Apologies that this makes my route map look “jumpier” than usual, especially when I’m away from the GZ.
Achievements
Footnotes
1 Often, when speaking to locals, they’d ask if it was our first time in Trinidad &
Tobago, and on learning that it was, they’d be shocked to hear that we’d opted to drive for ourselves rather than to hire drivers to take us places: it turns out that the roads are in
very-variable condition, from wonderfully-maintained highways to rural trails barely-driveable without a 4×4, but locals in both drive with the same kind of assertive and sometimes
reckless attitude.
2 tl;dr of driving in Trinidad & Tobago, as somebody who learned to drive in the UK: (1)
if you need to get out of anywhere, don’t wait for anybody to yield because they won’t, even if you theoretically have the right of way: instead, force your way out by obstructing
others, (2) drive in the middle of the road wherever possible to make it easier to dodge potholes and other hazards, which are clustered near the soft verges, and swing to your own
side of the road only at the last second to avoid collisions, and (3) use your horn as often as you like and for any purpose: to indicate that you want to turn, to warn somebody that
you’re there, to tell somebody to move, to say hello to a nearby pedestrian you recognise, or in lieu of turning on your headlights at night, for example. The car horn is a universal
language, it seems.
Found the location and the hint object, but a thorough search did not reveal the cache. I think it might be missing, and the
previous log (erroneously tagged as if it were found but clearly indicating in the text that it was not, and therefore possibly in need of deletion?) implies the same.
(I initially assumed the cache must be here because if its recent “found” log – this is why its important to log DNFs! 🙄)
Anyway, thanks to CO and keeper for this cache. Without it, we wouldn’t have come up to this beautiful spot in the first place.
The geohound and I braved an explore of this litter-filled GZ but couldn’t spot a cache among the copious detritus before the whiny little thing started fighting to get back to the warm
of the car and to the rest of her “pack”. Maybe next time we pass by this way.
An extended search over two visits today by the eldest child and I couldn’t reveal this one. Very frustrating, given that it’s clearly there somewhere (CO performed maintenance just
yesterday!). We’re staying in a cabin a little way downstream, so we might find another opportunity to search again tomorrow, weather-permitting. 🤞
QEF while stopped for a confort break on a long journey North from Oxford. The dog wanted to go with the others into the services, but had to stay outdoors with me and hunt for the
cache. Solid hint!
My mum and I have been visiting Ireland on a geohashing & geocaching expedition. We’d spotted this shamrock shape but it wasn’t in our operating zone so we didn’t get a chance to hunt
any of them, until today’s journey up to Knock airport saw us take a comfort break nearby, and we figured we’d come find this cache, at least.
I’m at a crossroads. Literally, not figuratively.
Found this well-maintained cache with no difficulty at all: I thoroughly approve of a cache that is hidden just barely enough to not be muggled, but not so much as to inconvenience a
geocacher who’s sometimes in a hurry! Nice work, FP awarded. TFTC.
I’ve never much gone for ‘challenge caches’. Mostly they just bug me when I fail to filter them off my map and only end up realising that I’m arbitrarily disallowed from logging them
when I’m already out and about.
So imagine my surprise when, stopping in town this misty morning on my way to Knock airport after a week of geohashing/geocaching along the West coast with my mother, I discovered by
chance that I’m actually eligible for it. I’ve cached plenty enough to meet the virtuals count but I couldn’t for the life of me name the six countries I’ve apparently found virtuals
in. Apparently I have, though, according to the checker, so I parked nearby and walked out here to find the cache.
Shall I sign the log? Oh, wait…
It didn’t take long before I spotted something suspicious and pulled it, and lo and behold, it was the cache. The lid is absent and the logbook missing, so I tore a bit off a bus ticket
from my wallet and wrote the usual bits on that before returning the cache to its hiding spot.
Guess I’ll just write this here.
I’m still not a big fan of challenge caches, but I enjoyed this cache for what it is nonetheless. Might need a new logbook and possibly a lid, though!
A quick and easy find on our way to the airport at Knock to end our Irish adventure, this morning.
Expedition
Finding the hashpoint was easy. We drove to it, arriving at 10:31, overshooting very slightly and walking back 20 metres (we could’ve done it without even getting out of the car if we’d
cared to). Then we were done.
It’s pretty cold out.
What happened next is where things went wrong. We stopped in Ballyhaunis, half-way between the hashpoint and the airport at Knock, for a comfort break and to find a local geocache. Then
we hiked out to find a second nearby geocache, but the icy conditions on the way back slowed us down considerably (and my mother fell over at least once). We stepped into a cafe for a
quick drink, and apparently my attitude to our imminently-departing flight was so laid-back (in actual fact, I thought we had about half an hour more in-hand than we did) that my mother
decided to reflect it and play laid-back too. Sarcastically, she suggested we stay around Ballyhaunis for a round of cakes, too, and I – not recognising her tone as sarcastic – agreed.
In fact, I thought that her relaxed attitude was because we had a long time until our flight, too. (tl;dr: when two people famed for their sarcasm communicate
sarcastically with one another, they should be careful not to, y’know, completely fuck up their plans for the rest of the day by accident)
As we digested our scones and my mother prepared to pour a second mug of tea, I pulled out my phone and realised to my horror that our plane was scheduled to depart in a little over 40
minutes: I’d got the departure time wrong. She said, “I thought you knew it was close, but you knew something I didn’t, like that it was really late!?” Nope.
We ran as fast as the icy ground would permit us to back to the car and drove at great speed to the airport, just in time to miss the closure of the departure desk. We’d just missed the
last and indeed only flight out of Knock airport that day. Fuck.
Anyway, all of which is to say that we extended the rental on our car, arranged to drop it off at Dublin airport, and drove coast-to-coast across Ireland to get to a more-favourable
airport and a last-minute AirBnB, where we dropped out bags then went out for pizza in a dangerously underlit bar
before listening to some Irish folks music in a different bar and going to bed.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow… we’ll leave the country. I promise.
Despite having been hidden as recently as 2022, this “feels” like an old-school cache. A non-trivial offset, a real scramble through the terrain to find it, and a generous-sized
container at the other end. Back around 2010 many more caches felt like this, and in a way I miss them: being able to find a quick-and-easy traditional cache on every street corner is a
quick win, but it takes some of the satisfaction out of the old days when you’d expect an extended journey and hunt.
That said, our expedition to this cache was perhaps quite a lot harder than it needed to be. There’s a few reasons for that. The first reason is that we didn’t start out until the sun
was getting close to the horizon, which made searching for the first part hard and the second part – by which point we were using our phones as torches – extremely challenging. Another
challenge came from that first part, which was not where it ought to be: we found it on the floor, rather than hanging as indicated, some metres away from the correct location, and
having lost *both* of its NFC tags. Digging through the leaf litter eventually revealed one of the tags, and we’ve left it stacked with the board, but without being re-attached to its
tree it’s going to get lost again the next time the weather turns bad. Worth a look!
It took a long time to find our target at stage one. It took almost as long again to decode its data into a usable format.
The next challenge came from the encoding of the NFC tag. It’s possible to encode an NFC tag so that it says “this is text”, but the CO has encoded it to say “this is a URL”. As a
result, my phone insisted in trying to open the coordinates as a URL (stripping all space characters from it as it did so), leaving me to reverse-engineer it back to coordinates. And
then remembering how to convert my GPSr from DDM mode to Decimal so I could enter the coordinates in the right format. But I managed eventually. And wow: the CO wasn’t kidding when they
said this was on the opposite side of town!
My mum and I rushed across to the new location. Thankfully our first guess as to the place where we’d be able to park our car was correct, and we pressed on into the woods in the fading
light, tripping over branches and sploshing through streams as we tried to find out way by our phone torches alone. Getting close, we spiralled out, hunting for the cache. Eventually,
not helped by the hint (there are so many candidates!), and fearing our expedition at an untimely end, we hit the old logs, and found that the photo in log GL1A022W8 by macadonis to be
extremely helpful: even in the low light, we could see a hinted object and – after a little debate about which way we should be facing it – soon had the cache in hand. Hurrah!
We must’ve searched at the base of thirty or forty trees before we found the right one.
We signed the (proper size) log book and returned it as we found it. Thanks for a wonderful adventure; FP awarded for the effort that’s gone in to
making a cache that simultaneously felt both “modern” (with NFC tags) and “old school” (with the high effort-to-reward ratio, the challenging terrain, and the difficult hides). If stage
1 could be re-attached to its host and perhaps re-programmed to expose text, rather than URL, data, this cache could go from great to spectacular. TFTC!
After a boat tour of the bay and a delightful late lunch, my mum and I came out here to find this cache as the last of three muggles present were packing up. TFTC!
