Karst Camo (Waikato) Waitomo, North Island, New Zealand
By Bobo & Jojo on 09-Oct-08. Waypoint GC1H248

This cache has been challenging for many people. Early on it was a mushroom/toadstool that was tucked in next to a fern under a wee overhang. We put out many other similar looking mushrooms to help the trickery and get people used to seeing the mushrooms regardless of the time of year. Regardless of the outcome of the hunt people got to experiance a nice little patch of karst. Unfortunatly I stopped visiting Waitomo and wasn't able to look after the cache, a huge thanks to Kevin who has helped to look after this cache and of course thank you to all the people who searched and enjoyed this cache over the years.

While going through my travel photos, I found that I had taken a picture of the container so I added it to my find log from 7/5/17.

Cache has gone. I will probably archive this cache.

I have been looking after this cache. Checking on it, it has completely disappeared. No trace of anything to do with a cache.

After visiting the caves, my family and I walked up the path to search for this cache. I focused my search where I was zeroing out, but my non-caching husband looked elsewhere. He found the cache and the obvious white rock at least 45 feet from where I was showing GZ. It was up near the top of the trail and the white rock was flat, leaning against the base of the rock wall, hiding the camo'd tube. It was very much there on July 5th. Thanks for bringing us to this cool area, Bobo & Jojo!

Wow o.k...found it but unable to retrieve paper. Awesome cave trip and great walk.

We have found this one during our geotrip to China and New Zealand. We have enjoyed our 10 day stay in New Zealand a lot, especially its beautiful nature and atmosphere. All those caves are really worth seeing - we have visited the Ruakuri cave, Waitomo Glowworm cave and also another one during an adventure tour. Many thanks for the cache and also for showing us this nice place. Greetings from the Czech Republic.

Today we visited the caves with the glow worms. After that we went to the camping and made a little walk to look for this cache. As previous finders remarked in their logs, the paper was not to be written. It was a nice walk.
TFTC

12:21
Great walk from the caves to the lookout point.
As previous finders have pointed out, this cache is done and needs complete replacement.
Thanks for leading our steps here!

This geocacher reported that the container is damaged.

see log

#2916, 4/30/2017

Thanks For The Cache!

[Logged by Geopt Geocaching Tools](http://www.geopt.org/link.php?gctools=4)

Visiting Waitomo Cave we also looked for this one.
Nice rock formations but the cache inan open pipe containing clumpy and wet paper is just crap.
Need definitely maintenance.

**Blinkies**

After cave exploration I had time to visit this place. The log sheet was totally wet, so I tried to get some markings to it and to confirm, a photolog. TFTC!

Nice stroll to cache site. Took a few minutes to track this one down.
Eventually spotted though logbook very damp and tatty.
TFTC.

Nach einer ewig langen Anreise machen wir jetzt für die nächsten 5 Wochen Neuseeland unsicher und suchen hier nach Dosen und Abenteuern, und anscheinend suchen Millionen von Sandfly's dabei nach uns. Zuerst auf der Südinsel und danach noch auf der Nordinsel - auf der es anscheinend nur regnet. Und da wir einmal hier unten sind, gibt es auch noch nen Abstecher nach Fiji.

heutige Etappe: Waitomo

Zur Dose:
Nach dem Blackwaterrafting machten wir noch eine kleine Wanderung und fanden diese - etwas feuchte - Dose.

Danke für's Legen und Herführen sagt Bison1.0.

Really nice place!!
Took us a while to find it, we roamed around, 4 of us visiting this site and finally found it!!!
Need maintenance as the log is fully wet
TFTC

We thought we had about 45 minutes to get to this cache and back to the nearby Waitomo Caves Hotel for a presentation evening as part of our cycle tour of the North Island. We parked at the Rugby ground (not the suggested co-ordinates in the description, which seem to me to be incorrect) and used the lookout walk trail on the flat for a while...then it turned uphill and up steps and then up more steps! There was a slight delay in finding the cache as we got sidetracked looking at the amazing rock! Wow! Very unusual formations to our UK/Australian eyes, anyway. When we re-checked our co-ords we were 20m away (oops) so moved along a bit and quickly had the cache in hand. The log is really soggy and falling apart, as it has no protection from the elements at the moment. Still time to go up to the lookout, so up we go...more steps...more REALLY WET steps in fact...huge puddles everywhere. Finally at the lookout - good views to be had, but some rude creature had plopped out a huge pat in the middle of the viewing platform! Quick check of FB - oh no, the presentation evening is at the Waitomo MOTOR INN. That's 8km down the road! So, down we went, dodging the cowpats and the puddles at high speed...running on all the flat bits, hustling on all the steep bits...back to the car and woosh, gone. We think we did the walk up, cache find, up to the lookout and back in less than 30 minutes in the end, and made our function with time to spare...phew. A great mini-adventure which is what makes caching so special. TFTC!

Found with Maryfairy on a walk from Juno Hall to Waitomo

Found with Rapidkhan on our first day in Waitomo.

The cache has no lids.

Not found.

On the way to explore the caves, I had to stop for this one since it looked so intriguing. I'm glad I did, it was a wonderful little hike and search for the cache in a unique location! Took me some time to finally spot the hiding place. TFTC!

What a fun adventure this was with the kids today to the nearby caves. Amazing.

Couldn't help myself and raced up the many stairs from the bottom of the car park. Should have taken the route from closer to the top near the visitor centre! Ha ha

A quick find but the log is damp. Container doesn't seem to have ends? Weird! TNLN TFTC

Very wet. ..

Paid a visit to the amazing glowworm caves today and as this one was close by the car park, it just had to be done! Found quickly, log is wet and needs replacing! TFTC

Our journey todey goes from Tongariro to Te Awamutu. But we have enough time to found some caches near the road. So we found this one.
Thanks for showing this places and hidding the caches. Greetings from Germany!!!

Found in a second. Logbook very wet and dirty. Missing lid on one side...

TFTC, Zynikus

Quick find on the way to the lookout point before heading to the glowworm caves. Actually had to walk up twice, as I had forgotten my pen in the car...
Thanks for hiding!

The container is damaged, logbook is wet.

We were visiting the wonderful caves below, but we had to wait for our tour to start. So I decided we hunt for some caches. Nadia found the container lying on the ground, open and completely wet. See attached photo with last log. Our pen didn't work on the wet paper. I placed it under a nearby rock, but I don't know the original hiding place. Will post a maintenance notice. Cheers

Looking at the gallery was in the right area but to many nooks & crannies to hide in... Better luck next time.

There was a oddly placed stone. But we didn't find the cache. Searched for 2 hours...

No luck today had a quick look in heavy rain

DNF So sad for this oldie...

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Found during our NZ tour with Mikisha. We spent 3 weeks visiting both islands, starting at Auckland and going south, through Rotorua, the Tongariro national park and Wellington. Then, tookthe ferry to Picton, and took the west coast, via Abel Tasman, Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciers, Queenstown, Invergargill, and took the east coast via Dunedin, Oamaru, and finally arriving to Christchurch. 3 weeks with awesome caches, plenty of oldies, and lots lots of fun Thanks to all the owners for those boxes and fortheir maintenance! ^^

Tftc

Another NZ DNF. Got a stable GPS reading but no white rock (well several possible) but UK caching skills of looking for an odd pile of sticks etc. did not work. Last day at Waitomo so reading the logs may confirm it is missing but no help to my finding it.

Great hiding place!

Thanks for the Cache

6-turtles

2626 Parked in the main car park and took the long way round. (Didn't notice the sign and the bottom end of the car park). Arrived at GZ and stood admiring the rock formations and spotted the hide. That was lucky. Thanks.

After a great tour around the Glowworm Caves we made a mad dash for this cache. By the time we had climbed all those steps there was a lot of heavy breathing before Mr R spotted the interesting hide. SL and replaced as found.

Found as part of our "2016 Pensioners' Road Trip"

Many thanks to Bobo & Jojo for setting this cache and greetings from the Isle of Man.

Cache number 4956

Found while visiting fro South Australia. Unfortunately we didn't bring a pen so couldn't fill in the log. TFTC.

During an evening walk in the neighbourhood surrounding our hotel I had the fantastic idea to check if there were any geocaches lying about. There were two! Unfortunately I didn't bring a pen but a nice, unrevealing photo should do the trick. I was about to give up on this one, because it was getting dark, but suddenly my light fell on the exact point. My first New Zealand find.

Wow... what a neat idea! That definately lifted my mood when walking around a bit in the drow ing rain showers today. TFTC.

Great find Out exploring with gordimarps after visiting the glow worm cave. Tftc

First of the day with MJGX2. Great cache container thought it was real! TFTC

On of today's adventures on my vacation in New Zealand was the visit of the Waitomo Glowworm Caves after coming here from Auckland. An incredible and also very interesting visit, i now even have a rule to tell the difference between stalactites and stalagmites. After that i took a look on caches nearby and saw this one. It was visited and with intuition, the hiding place and the cache were quickly discovered. My hand and pen did their job, and another grinning smiley is now on my geocaching map.
Thanks from a german cacher to the owner for placing and maintaining this cache

***No muggles were harmed while searching, finding and logging this cache...***

Easy find, though also easy looked over.

TFTC

TFTC

Very cute. Amazing place.

TFTC

Awesome cache we spent a lot of time before we found it.

Ironically, the first thing I saw was the cache but the camouflage is really nice!

Added to my favorites. Tftc!!

We still had some time before going to the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, so we decided to walk up to the lookout and search for the cache inbetween. It was not that easy to find, but after reading the hint and some of the former logs, we were able to discover something unusual.

Thanks for hiding the cache!

Stopped off at the caves on route down to Taupo from Auckland. After taking a tour of the beautiful caves we headed off (in the pouring rain) towards this cache. Beautiful location... The cache however required quite a bit of searching before we finally found th esneakily camo'd container. Hint (description) is somewhat misleading... Many white rocks in the area although yes, it the container is close to some of them. However, I didn't expect to have to move so far off the path to find the cache. Thankfully jojjak's sharp eyes did spot it though and my nick could be added

SL. TFTC. FP awarded.

3280 - 3:32:00 PM - Cache #1 of 1 for the day.

French
Lors de notre trip en NZ nous serons de passage dans la région et nous en profiterons pour faire quelques chouettes découvertes ainsi que quelques caches

Voici la première cache bricolée , nous avons cherché quelques minutes avant de la trouver celle-ci
Joli le karst ici!

Bobo & Jojo, thanks for the geocache
Frank et Muriel
10073
Belgique
Log with GSAK

Wauw, what a beatifull place. A favo. My buddy had better eyes than me.
Thanks from a Dutch

Hier eerst 'overal' gezocht en niets kunnen vinden. Tot mijn oog ineens viel op iets afwijkends en Yes, bingo.
Bedankt voor de leuke wandeling naar deze fraai gecamoufleerde cache met een FAVO.

After a cave tour I went up to the viewpoint. Well actually I went up to get the cache and as I was pretty much up by then I decided to take the last stairs up to the viewpoint as well . From up there one has a nice overview of the village and the valley.

But back to the cache: My GPS led me exactly to the correct spot where I spotted something unusual. Well, it was unusual indeed as it also contained a log.

Thanks for showing the place and greetings from Austria.

At World’s End – New Zealand – One of our dream become true.

Our plan was to stay 4 weeks in New Zealand. But this wasn’t this easy to manage at work. So we moved spontanic the plan from march to november. We informed us before about point of interessts. The list was this long so we decided to go by campervan from the north to the south to have the most mobility. We arrived after way to much hours in Auckland and started there our round trip. At first we enjoyed the area in auckland and the north. In Waitomo we were able to see and enjoy glohworms in one of the famous caves. But this area had a lot of nice hiking trails were we could discovered the Piripiri Caves, Natural Bridge and the Marokopa Falls. This was already impressive to see and still the beginning of our adventure for life. The trip went on over Okere Falls Scenic Reserve direction Rotorua. In this area we enjoyed each hour, because each corner was different. We visited the Haumurana Springs – what amazing water -, Blue Lake and Green Lake and relaxed in Kerosene Creek. We liked all the water and in our travel guide we found a hike cloth to the Huka Falls, which ofcourse we did as well. All this flowers were bloom. One oft the Highlights was Wai-O-Tapu. The weather was perfect and all this colors awesome and the geysir a nice shower. By Campercan the to tour went on direction Tongariro Alpine with a short stop at Orakei Korako and the Tongariro River Loop Track. Lu like nice hiking tours and what could be the best for her birthday? Of course the famous Tongariro Alpine Crossing. We started early in the morning and walked approximately 9 hours over gras, stones, snow and colorful water. Now we had to leave the Heart of North New Zealand and went over Taranaki Falls to the East Coast with the goal Napier. The weather was cloudy and often raining but a small sightseeing was a must have. The last stop on the North Irland was Wellington. But it was only raining and some streets were already flooded. That’s why we change spontanic our plan and only did the First Cache of New Zealand and went by ship over the Marlboro Sound to Picton. We went over Farewell Spit to the lonely Wharariki Beach with sea lions. On the way back to the big streets we stopped at Waikoropupu Spring and Janie Sesson Shipwreck and drove untypical to Karamea. In Germany we do not have this much and public caves and that’s way we enjoyed this area! Cloth to the West Coast we took a look at the Pancake Rocks. The weather was just raining and so we could not see the Franz Josef and Fox Glacier, but we still visited them. We leaved the bad weather in the hills and enjoyed the Sun at Ship Creek, Thunder Creek, Fantail Falls and the Blue Pools. Wow they were relly blue and this clean and deep. I never saw something similar before. About Wanaka we read a lot in our travel guide and looked forward to it. There arrived we visited the Puzzling World and walked around the sea. Queenstown the next town we drove just through because at this time there was a marathon and it was really campervan unfriendly. So we used the time and drove to Milford Sound and enjoyed the hills surround us on the water. I never felt this small. After we are landed again on land the trip goes on to the Chasm and Clifden Caves and the Clifden Suspension Bridge. Wow what an adventure. At the end we visited a few cities like Bluff, Duneding, Moeraki Boulders and Christchurch were our Trip sadly ends.

At all this places we looked for nice and unique caches which shows us places which we never would had seen without. We enjoyed the nature and wildlife each day and it was really an adventure for life. At the end we drove approximately 5000 kilometeres and felt this relaxed.
Thanks to all owners for placing this caches and this much informations which we got about the particular areas. This was an adventure for life for us. Thanks for this beauty time.

Greetings from Germany – Luco235

Awesome cache. It was easy to find, but that was because the top was off.

Down in New Plymouth for the weekend to visit the offspring - we had a great time and found some superb caches along the way. Detoured to Waitomo for a couple of caches on the way back and had a lovely walk along here. TFTC and for bringing us here - scores a favourite from me

"Ein Männlein steht im Walde, ganz still und stumm "

After the visit of the GLOW WORM CAVE we decided to go for a cache before driving to TORINGO on our tour through NZ.

Little problem to find the right spot, but finally this box could not hide...

Great camo. Will get a favorite! TFTC

223/Ma

During our holidays in NZ wist1972 and me also visited this place. Found the cache easily. It was made very nice that´s why I give a FP.

T4TC and cheers from Austria!
nelli*

During our holidays in New Zealand, nelli* and i found this cache quick.

TFTC-FP in

Jens9489 found this little well camoed cache while i was still reading the description Continued up to the lookout after the find and our tour through the glowworm cave.
Nice idea!
Tftc

Made a quick find. Nice camo!
Tftc

Visited with a friend New Zealand for one month. We've rented a Campervan and went to the best places over the South and North -Island. The journey was without doubt the best holiday we ever had, we would be glad to visit the country again but being so far away it will need definitely a couple of years.
A really nice loaction but one thing didnt fit into the landscape. That was the Geocache Well done!
Afterwards we visited the caves.
Greetings from Germany and TftC!

Great cache hav a fav tftc twitcher50

Found it after all three Cave tours.
Camouflage unexpected but great cache.
Easy to find.
TFTC

Good camouflage and a quick find. TFTC

Had headed back to the motel after a day exploring Waitomo and the Kiwi sanctuary in Otorohanga for dinner... and decided the two local caches deserved a look, so headed out for a quick search in the night to limit the mugglers... Arrived at GZ and found the hinted element but the cache was still in hiding... must have spent approx. half hour searching by torch light until things made sense, and the find was made....very nice hide....
Fav. point given for this one...

TFTC.

Great spot! Tftc!

Quick find, the Camo is unexpected

Well that sucked. Particularly in heels with a humongous handbag and two small children. Some amazing places to have put it, but no hint and several potential white rocks to choose from. Bitterly disappointed.

Quite a hike to find this cache, but it's such a lovely morning that we carried on to the lookout. Thanks for giving us the motivation to come up here to admire the beautiful view. Love the cache container too. Gets a favourite point from us.

Didn't find it

Last time we were in New Zealand and spend our holiday on the Northern Island – that was fantastic!
We landed in Wellington and from this great town we went through the island – we were near Mt. Taranaki, in the Tongariro Nationalpark, on Lake Taupo, in two Thermal Areas, in Rotorua, on Coromandel Peninsula, on the Bay of Islands, on the Ninety Mile Beach, in the Sand Dunes, on Cape Reinga and in Auckland.
All the time we visited there the main attractions – but we wanted to do our hobby (geocaching), too.
So we looked for the boxes next to the highways and on all the wonderful places of this very nice Island.
Here we could found the box very well - nice cache, we say thanks to the owner and thanks for the cache.

I'm taking full credit for finding this one! Gets a favorite point too =) redsoxbean totally missed the cache but luckily I decided to look where he had already looked. From Pennsylvania USA. TFTC!!

Nice walk up to this cache with Loth before our last cave tour. Loth made the tricky find. Tftc!

Nice hide, TFTC

Coordinates changed from:
S 38° 15.582 E 175° 06.312

Coordinates changed to:
S 38° 15.576 E 175° 06.310

Distance from original: 37.7 feet or 11.5 meters.
Updating the coordinates to those of NZpixie, these seem to be more useful than the original ones from nearly eight years ago. I'm a little surprised that this one is still going as at the same time an identical one was eaten by a possum, some of it was anyway, perhaps the Waitomo possums don't have the same tastes as those in Wellington. Good luck and enjoy the natural beauty of the area.

On our journey to New Zealand, xhead and I travelled to the South and the North Island and to Stewart Island. We had a lot of fun hiking in these great landscapes, viewing a lot of interesting animals and nice peoples. Sometimes a little treasure likes this Cache was crossing our way. Thank you very much for hiding this Cache in this amazing place.
Greetings from Germany, Akirey

Akirey and I visited in April and May New Zealand. First we decided to look around on the South Island including Steward Island then we went to the North Island.
All the time we enjoyed our trip. We saw a lot of sweet animals, amazing landscapes and met many nice people.

Also we searched for some caches. This one was one of them.

Thanks for hiding and greetings from Frankonia
xhead

Nice easy little walk for the consolation prize of a cute & clever cache since I had to pull out of today's inaugural Waitomo trail run.What a beautiful grotto! Tftc! Used coords as suggested by NZpixie, S38 15.576 E175 06.310

Amazingly quick find after looking like a million possibilities. Love it.

The little cacher called GZ "magical". We walked past the cache many, many times ha ha. Eventually we realised and then felt suitably fooled ha ha

The forest walk and nature around GZ was magical!
Tips: 38 15.576 175 06.310 coordinates worked better for us, also if you are coming from Top10 holiday park don't go look for the carpark, follow the path to lookout instead.

Very frustrating search but eventually by widening the search found it.

put some new paper in for a log. Try these co-ordinates 38 15.576 175 06.310. walk past the bush into the open to get better reception and then come back to it.

Took us a while longer than planned. After going through the past logs, we discovered that we had to walk a bit further than suggested by the coordinates. Then Consortin spotted the rare species soon but only after a while tried to open it.

TFTC - Fogg & Consortin

Well as usual my stomp around and poke everything technique worked again

I think the cache owner and I have the same thinking patterns, walking up the train the rock in question was very obvious, Don't think to hard about this one and the answer with sprout up at you.

TFTC
Favorite Point

Arrived at GZ to find BloosBoy & crusaderwoman looking rather frustrated looking for this cache. They had apparently been here 4 times before looking for it, so my hopes did fall slightly on hearing that. Fuzzy fruit did her stomp around combing all over the terrain method while I tried to read the previous logs trying to gleen some info out of them. Her method came up with the goods. The hint made perfect sense to her, I still dont get it. "Placed" maybe, by a volcano or eachquake but no by man. Very clever cache though.

4th Jan 2011 - The first time Crusaderwoman & I didn't find this and way too embarrassed to log the other DNFs since! We almost didn't get it today but then four other pairs of eyes turned up and a short time later it was picked and in the bag (so to speak!).
Thanks to Fuzzyfruit & support crew for excellent spotting!
Thanks to Bobo & Jojo for one of the more frustrating Geocaches...

Thanks to Fuzzy Fruit and Fireman Sam for finally helping out with this cache. The log book was full and we only had a scrap of paper. I'm convinced it wasn't there other times we have looked.

How cute I haven't seen one like this before. Lots of great hiding spots around here

Schade, schade.., 100 Spuren, ungenaue Koordinaten und überall vertrampelter Wald, welcher weiße Stein???, vom Cache leider nichts zu sehen...- ein klarer Hint und genaue Koordinaten würden die Natur schonen..

Thought I could find this before our Waitomo cave tour but ran out of time. Very interesting rock formation so I took a number of pictures. TFTH

after we visited the beautiful glowworm caves it stopped raining and we decided to walk to the outlook. The stairs were at some places completely under water but we managed. The view was not so good. On the way back to the car we stopped to search this one, which took a lot of time, From the logs we knew that the cache was not exactly at the zeropoint, but after a while we found the little one
Thanx for hiding

Stopped on my weekend Road Trip to geocaching event in Whangamata, as there's usually too many muggles about. But at 6pm on a wet Friday evening I almost had the place all to myself. Came to this one on the recommendation of a friend. Enjoyed the walk in the continuous rain, but not the half hour's scrambling around in the wet undergrowth. Disappointingly gave up and started walking out. Phoned said friend who'd previously found it and went back. His memory wasn't as good as I would've liked as I was now searching a much bigger area, ignoring GPS. Eventually found the sneaky little hide some 12m longitudinally and 3m vertically from where GPS had me. Sorry, as I was now soaking wet and dirty I'll keep the FP for a less frustrating cache, but Thanks for bringing me here and TFTC

Searched for an annoying long time even at the coordinates provided in a log of another cacher. No white stone and no cache.

Found while with drawp spending time at the caves. TFTC

One of the many caches we found on our campervan journey from Lower Hutt to Tauranga. A mighty and enjoyable journey through many great and iconic parts of the north island. Many thanks to the many CO's for the great cache placements and for bringing us to new places. Sorry for the generic log.