Oporua Floodway (Wairarapa) Tuhitarata, North Island, New Zealand
By Skindo on 30-Jul-10. Waypoint GC2CJM3

Thought this one might be worth another go after failing to find it in 2015 then seeing a few others had found it subsequently. Today arrived and found there was dense thicket of cut branches thrown in close to GZ. I checked all around the stumps in that area and in the trees plus widened the search. After 15 minutes I reached the same conclusion as I did in 2015. It may well be there somewhere but life has to have more meaning than finding an abandoned plastic pottle in this area. RIP Oporua Floodway.

!

No sign of cache.

Had a quick look today no luck for us

Found it no where near expected widened our search a lot for a 1 difficulty tftc cache and log in good order

Eluded me too

Not today. Had a good look though.

No luck for me here today.

Found after a 10 min scramble. Tftc

Another good hiding place. Not sure why others didn't find it.
Thank you for the cache!

Tftc found it empty water out log was dry enough to sign

Looked everywhere but no luck

Stopped here for five to ten minutes. Checked lots of places. Nothing seen. Will try again in future when I have more time available.

Found had to go of the road more.

Was worried about the fence but found I needn't be... Finally located

Took a little while to find this one, as we had assumed it would be closer to the road, but stumbled across it when we widened our search area.
Left a pet rock - a frog. TFTC skindo

48. Coordinates were about 4 meters out for us. I found it by approaching from a different angle, rereading the logs and checking every likely object. A quick find from the right angle! TFTC

Found on a sedate 3-day road trip to Napier with Infoferret.
Widened the search quite considerably from the last time I was here as the fence had stopped me before. Thought the fence was live but it turns out it is not!
TFTC

Found after a motorsport event at Tauherenikau. Took a while to find this one. There were some very curious cows in the nearby paddock. It is hard to be inconspicuous when a whole herd of cows are all staring at you! TFTC.

Nice find after a short hunt. TFTC.

TFTC. I let the BF do the scrambling around

Thank you for this wonderful cache. It was a beautiful place in an incredible country.

Thanks to Paua for finding this one needed to search around away from the road side, as the car scoot along here.

We were a bit dubious about looking for this as there were two DNF's when we downloaded the cache. However it was a relatively easy find if you scour the area.

#33 Took a chance on this one which turned out very well as the cache is there. Possibly it is further away from the road than people have been looking but it is easy to find.

On a road trip to Palliser and Lake Wairarapa with Br'er Bear to collect caches we had run out of time to collect during our last visit to the area.

A search of the obvious places bought no joy. Had a quick look near trees but drew a blank here too.

No find - should have read logs!!!

On a quick dash to cape palliser and back. This was find number 26 for the day. Had to widen search area then found it out in open. Placed it back next to a tree. TFTC.

Easy find, thx!

Hard to believe that the whole area gets flooded. Quick find, TFTC

A plan was hatched for another extreme, fly down, drive back caching weekend. funkymunkyzone, alpenmilch80 and myself flew down to Wellington on the first flight Saturday morning. We met up with vista at Petone in the Toyota Yaris rental car, as he'd flown down the previous day. We headed straight out of town and made a beeline for the start of our route at Featherston. We zig zagged our way through Wairarapa, Manawatu, Wanganui and Taranaki on our way back home to Auckland. To save time and log space, we stamped the logs as "Team AMFV".

Our 1500km / 40 hour drive consisted mainly of narrow gravel roads, some of which had spectacular scenery and views. Sorry for the copy/paste logs as its now all abit of a blur having only a few short naps in between. Many thanks to all the cache owners who have placed caches for us to find on another epic little adventure. TFTC!

mike-miss, funkymunkyzone, vistra and I met early Saturday morning for a two-day-geocaching-trip and once we collected the smallest relocation car available (a green camouflaged Yaris) we were on our way. funkymunkyzone already descripted the route we took in detail and I am still very impressed how he managed mostly the driving without getting lost a single time. Clearly he has his own Topo map in his head . This was a great team effort and I enjoyed the groups spirits and its laughs along the way till the sleep finally got me after the last cache in Taranaki.

In total I collected with the "Team AMFV" 278 smiles along the way and the word "brace" is no longer foreign to me. I would like to give a big thanks to Skindo and all the other cache owners for all the placements along our tour and hope I don’t annoy too much with the copy and paste logs. TFTC

Another fly-down-drive-back-caching weekend, this time in the company of mike-miss, alpenmilch80 and vistra. Three of us flew down very early on Saturday morning and met up with the other who had flown down the previous day. We headed straight out of Wellington, stopping just once to rendezvous with the other member of the team. We cached our way through the Wairarapa, Manawatu, Wanganui and Taranaki under the moniker "Team AMFV" (google it if you're interested, but it seemed appropriate for our mission).

We headed over the Rimutakas and started off with a loop of Lake Ferry before heading north and out into the back blocks.By the evening we were up around Masterton and heading back out into the sticks, criss-crossing Route 52 picking up cache finds along crazy little roads, the craziest of which were around Pongaroa, from where we headed back down and across to SH2 just north of Eketahuna, coming over the insane hills at Pori just after dawn. Spectacular.

We all piled into our little Toyota Yaris rental car, which had probably never seen such terrain before in its life, judging by the amount of clanginjg of metal on stones, and scraping of underbody on metal road centre. All part of the fun though, and nothing like taking 40.5 hours (with basically no sleep), over 1500km, to get from Wellington to Auckland, stopping at 288 caches along the way - 173 on Saturday and 115 on Sunday. I enjoy driving long distances, so I drove for about the first 25 hours plus a few more hours later on Sunday - also because I had designed the route so I knew fairly well the way we were going, and this time we made no mistakes!

Sorry for the largely copy/paste logs, but it's hard work remembering all the different caches. Some stood out from the others but we enjoyed every single one of them and were thankful for every single placement along the way. This trip, and the company, was fantastic and a fun but shatteringly tiring weekend.

TFTC!!!

This cache was found as part of a marathon weekend of geocaching with alpenmilch80, mike-miss and funkymunkyzone - aka "Team AMFV" It was a full on weekend of non-stop caching, mostly on windy gravel Wairarapa roads!

I had flown down to Wellington on Friday, then met up with the others first thing Saturday morning. We loaded up a Toyota Yaris rental car, then slowly made our way back up to Auckland, arriving late on Sunday night! The poor little car certainly got put through a lot!

It was an incredibly long and tiring weekend, but great fun at the same time, with a great group of cachers! All up I found 250 new caches over the weekend and revisited a few that I had found before. Sorry for the copy and paste logs, but the weekend is already a blur! TFTC!!

Caching afternoon with metal-art.

Quick find on way back home after a day caching TFTC

another interesting place. +TB. t4tc

#5 of 8 finds on the way home from an overnight stay at Lake Ferry.
Definitely no risk of being washed into the lake today. Blown away though by the non-equinoxial gales. Mrs C scored this one using geosense while the GPS steered me to the other end.
TFTC yet again, skindo.

New Years Day find on our circuit of the lake TFTC.

Replaced logbook

Found today with Dad while out caching. TFTC

Quick find with the youngster while doing a circuit of the lake caching. TFTC

Easy find at another Sth Wairarapa floodway. TFTC

Yep, this one was also found. Apparently sitting where it was supposed to.

Found at 11:27 - #4492 - together with aedk and Difool - logged as RAD to save space and time

TFTC

Found with renelm and Difool, logged as RAD to save log space, time and trees.

I am not much of a logwriter, so see renelms, and possibly Difools, log for details.

TFTC!

Went Featherston to Featherston round Lake Wairarpa and on to Lower Hutt.

Logged as RAD together with renelm and aedk.

TFTC

Difool - #1338 - 2013-11-05@11:26 NZDT

Lucky no water. Found with troodles. TFTC

TFTC found with mttomatoking on our long weekend away

Found quickly, TFTC

Cache had rolled down the hill. Not sure it is back in the right spot - if it is it could use some more material to help keep it there.

Cache # 1,334 - Pulled up to this one, and there was another car parked nearly on top of the GZ. We waited for them to leave, and after a couple of minutes they reversed up to us. I thought they were fellow cachers knowing exactly why we had stopped, but instead they wanted to make sure we were ok. Then they left. Once they were out of sight dashed over to the GZ, where I found the container sitting in the open down the hillside. Put it back where I think it belongs. TNLNSL. TFTC!

One of a number found on a wet and windy day. TFTC

Bit difficult at times to pull up and retrieve some of these park and grabs when you are in a 10 meter motorhome towing a car, but we did it.

Looked for this one with Done and Dusted. Had to widen our search and grovel around a bit before sighting it, TFTC.

We took off with the task of finding 100 caches in a day in the Wairarapa with the opportunity to test our skills on the solutions of some of Skindo's many great puzzle caches. We managed our target for the day after a great trip around and across the region. Many thanks Skindo for your challenging puzzles and the many placements you have made. TFTC

cache 31 on day two of Etherlord and the Seagnoid's almost-100-cache-"Attack on Skindo's Puzzles" weekend in the Wairarapa. #76 for me

Skindo: 63
Others: 13

Out in the Wairarapa with Etherlord and the Etherkids on an Attack on Skindo's Translation Puzzles weekend. This lake is only 2.5m deep? I could just about wade across?? I suppose it has a sludgey floor... Thanks for the quick lesson Skindo. On to the next...

On a caching raid in the Wairarapa, Martinborough-based.
Straightforward find, cache in order, log signed; safely re-hidden, just as found.
TFTC found with team cacher Sweet P too
The Turtle strikes again!

(bindz01)Found on second attempt. First attempt was pretty lazy and it ended up not being too hard.

This entry was edited by Pratt01 on Saturday, 30 March 2013 at 04:46:00 UTC.

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Some dark looming clouds over the Rimatukas created some amazing sunset colours, TFTC.

Found without much difficulty.

Fence looked electric, but seemed alright in the end.
Thanks for the stop here - I had wondered what all those signs had been referring to, about the road being OPEN or CLOSED

STRUGGLED BUT FOUND IT. GOOD SPOT.

Found this one after a lengthy hunt. Had the right spot, but wrong side of fence. Once I referred to some of the earlier logs it was a quick find. TFTC

Day 6 of the trip home to Christchurch, around Martinborough. Thanks for the hides.

Find #10 on a days caching from Tawa to Lake Ferry and around Lake Wairarapa with I5BADASS.

Find #11 on a days caching from Tawa to Lake Ferry and around Lake Wairarapa with Kiwih3.

TFTC

TNLcoin

Find #1226, heading north towards the SH58 intersection, picking up some caches on the way. Initially, we couldn't seem to locate the cache as the coordinates wanted us to search on the floodway barrier, but are reading AdhesiveDuck's log, we hopped the fence and soon located the cache. Good information on the cache page. SL TFTC.

I had been here before and didn't find the cache, due to a reluctance to jump over the fence. I did it this time and had the cache in hand quickly. TFTC

Found with danielle:-). TFTC

Popped in and check this one is all ok

Thanks to the other logs this made sense. Hoping rain is going to stop soon... Tftc. Found with matt29

Another left over from last night. TFTC

Out for another adventure in skindoland which included a loop of the lake as well as a mystery tour. TFTC

This cache required the longest search of the day for me. Like some other recent finders, I did wonder if it was where it was supposed to be.

Second time lucky. As with previous logs had to cross the first fence. Wasn't sure if it was on but the second one was as our geodog soon found out!! We thought it was funny but he struggled to see the joke . Co-ords were bang on for us. TFTC

Hard to imagine this is a floodway. TFTC

Interesting spot. Needed to widen our search for this one. We too were a little surprised at the need to cross the fence for 1 1/2 stars. TFTC.

# 4693

#2723. It wasn't a pill bottle after all. Found the cache (screw top plastic jar as described) after some searching in a location ~1-6 metres away (GPS reading wandered a bit). The cache may not have been at the original location. It was found in a terrain that would rate higher than 1.5 stars. TNLNSL. Replaced where found. TFTC.

#3239. Didn't expect to have to go over the first fence (bit wary of its potential to electrocute) but once I did it was a quick find. Just as well; didn't want any DNFs on our trip (ended up with 112 finds for the weekend, and no DNFs)! TFTC.

Interesting how the flooding rivers are managed here.
After a short search at GZ rexulted in nothing (not even a pill bottle that simpsonsrgr8 found) StreetWalker perservered with the hunt and found the cache down the bank a bit, and over the fence. He then passed the logged book over the fence to me to sign .
TFTC.

We found a brown pill bottle on the side of the road broken and without a lid about 5m from GZ.

Given the recent DNF and the description of the container in the cache page we didn't bother looking beyond then.

Have put remains of container where I imagine the cache originally was.

No joy despite a decent search.

Easy find on our way back from Cape Palliser ,signed log TFTC

#5202

No worries for us for this one, this area must look impressive in flood!

TNLN TFTC

Good day geocaching towards light house, cheers!

Took a while to find this one, gps had us 6m from where we eventually found it. TFTC

Nearly gave this one away but one last look and found it tftc

Found it on the way to Boggy Pond. Thanks.

No joy here for us today

Checked this one out - everything's alright

No wasps today! Nice hide. Took out a cool toy car and then left on a log near the cache (doh!), bumped into the Taybees at the next cache who were headed in the opposite direction so asked if they could grab it... TFTC Felix!

Almost missed logging this find. Thanks and glad we found no wasp (cold & wet day).

log book sign See Taybee Log

Doing cache raid round Lake Wairarapa today easy found the Coordinates are spot on TFTc

The nearby wasps limited my search.

Had a good hunt for this one but didn't find it. Found the wasps. Also found a rock next to a white post which seemed an obvious spot, but no cache. Cheers Gav

Found this one on the way to the DOC campsite at the Putangirua Pinnacles. A quick find on this rainy day.

TFTC!

Quick find on the way to Cape Palliser. Easy find in the rain.

TFTC!!

Lady Pinguin