The Vineyards (North Otago) Otiake, South Island, New Zealand
By drawp on 17-Sep-10. Waypoint GC2F9G0

Arrgh! This cache doesn't like me at all. A second dnf. I had made contact with finders since my first dnf. Heck, it's not even a micro or nano. Maybe another time.

#22208. After crossing the ford we backtracked to this cache. Good parking here, and thankfully the cache was soon located. We did a U-turn and headed for the hills. TFTC.

After a morning spent mainly at the idyllic Bortons Pond, StreetWalkerNZ and I returned to base in Duntroon for a coffee, and a rest. Then after lunch, it was time to set out again .
After a hot walk in Wai o Toura/Gards Road Scenic Reserve, it was a relief to have a drive by. Hides in rock walls worry me, but luckily only a few rocks needed to be moved before the cache was found. TFTC.

Thanks for hiding this cache drawp I appreciate it. Nicely made wall. Four of us ended up searching. NZB came up with the goods.

On the road with NZ_B, graciesGPSfun and Nosynel. This one took all of us to find it! Interesting to come across a vineyard here. Thanks for the hide.
#8328

Oh no a rock wall . Hunted down. Tftc

A well made stone wall. On a two day roadie with NosyNel and Jude_e.
In Canterbury for a 25th wedding anniversary and am caching with GraciesGPSfun as well.
Kia ora rawa atu for the cache drawp.

Bit tight here!! Or have I been eating too many chockie biscuits!!! We saw a kitten running across the rd. Hope it had a home. A very lonely cache found with coconuts3 so TFTH

We are on a wee holiday in motorhome with busy paws. Staying at Glenmac farm and exploring the area in Suzy. A beautiful entrance here. Had fun looking for cache and happy to sign log. Thanks for bringing us here and the cache drawp.

No luck here for me today. There were few loose stones to remove. Maybe I'll have better luck another time.

In Kurow for the long weekend and time to head home with a few stops along the way. A bit of a detour up here to get this one and a nice quick find TFTC

Decided to make a trip to Duntroon over the Dansey Pass. Lots of logs to find and sign and this one was one of them. Day and it begins again. TFTC

Nice stop on a hot day

The (major road trip was about to begin) that was for the Oamaru Geofest trip in the company of HKCB and iammrwalker for a bit of a road trip across to the west coast, through Haast and in a roundabout way to Oamaru.

My trip stats were as follows: 617 caches (214 Puzzles), 3300kms, 500 litres of Petrol, 21 hours sleep, 100+hours caching time. THe weather was wonderful and apart from about a 6hour period on the sunday we had fine weather all the way and feel that we made a bit of a hole in the region.

Firstly thanks to all the CO's that put in the effort to to set up these caches and to all the CO's whose caches we did not find this trip, well we are already planning our next trip.
We worked hard at getting specific caches (especially the Geo Art around christchurch and hence our concentration on this area for the preliminary 24 hours. So after a couple of running repairs to the rental vehicle (fuses not working) we were off knowing that all ports could be charged and that sleep was for the weak.

Sorry about the copy and paste logs but that is what tends to happen with a number run of this size. Having collected caches through both the MacKenzie Basin, Myers pass and now across to Kurow on the way to Dansey's Pass before heading back and up to Oamaru

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Did you know that planning has started for a Mega Event in Wellington in 2018? Check out the details on the [WENZ Website](https://sites.google.com/site/wenzgeo2018/home) or visit the event's page on [FaceBook](https://www.facebook.com/groups/590545297801072/) and don't forget to log your attendance on the [WENZ Event Page](https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC78NMQ_wenz-event-2018-wellington?guid=23f451a2-08ac-4374-883f-ed6814687147/)

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Came down this way from the North for the Oamaru Geofest, and decided to add a few more days to the weekend trip and turn it into a bit of a Mega mission, starting 5pm on Wednesday 18th and finishing 3pm Monday 23rd! Teaming up with Cats&Dragons for the first 24 hours then with Iammrwalker joining the team for the remainder.
Just a few of the stats for the trip were:
- 700 caches found, including 270+ puzzles (thanks to the Christchurch Geoart)
- 3300 km's driven, using over 500L of fuel $$$
- Just over 20 hours of sleep (about 4 per day on average), and about 100 hours of caching time.
Certainly a Mega Trip!

Day 4: With the lack of sleep starting to take a toll we finished Day 3 off early and got a few hours sleep before getting back to finding about 2am this morning. Todays mission was to find caches around Tekapo before heading South through the Mackenzine Country via Hakataramea Pass, and onto Dansey's pass before coming out on the coast and heading to Oamaru for the Geofest and caching around the area.

Sorry about the cut and past logs, but that seems to happen with cache runs of this size!

I found this Geocache on a Geocaching mega mission along with Cats&Dragons and HKCB. With only just over three and half thousand Geocache finds I was very much the over achiever in training. We were in the South Island to support the Oamaru Geofest event, hunt down some Jasmar and D/T harder to find Geocaches, lonely caches (those not found in more than 6 months), virtuals and try and meet some milestone numbers. We signed the logs HIC, an abbreviation of our respective Geocaching names, (H)KCB, (I)ammrwalker and (C)ats&dragons. A huge thanks to all the CO’s who placed and maintain the Geocaches we found.

I arrived in Christchurch late Thursday evening having left straight from work and was picked up by my intrepid companions in our four wheel drive rental to find they had already grabbed about 270 finds in the previous twenty four hours. I wonder if the rental company would have still let us have it had they known we would travel 3300km in it before returning it four days later? Our trip took us to Greymouth via Arthurs pass, Ngahere, down the west coast to Haast across to Hawea, Cromwell, Twizel, Aoraki Mt Cook, Tekapo, onto the east coast up to Oamaru and back up to Christchurch via Akaroa and countless diversions and small towns along the way. We slept in the car for the first two nights, grabbing some shut eye between cache finds, taking turns to drive. We rented a small place in Oamaru for the other two nights and appreciated a bed to sleep in and a hot shower. It was an amazing trip, in which I discovered the South Island has some of the most incredible scenery in the world.

Clever but hard to remove

back on the back roads for a few of those out of the way caches nice quick find tftc

plenty of these around today, definitely not a quick find plenty of options but got there in the end tftc

TFTC

Next cacher will be able to see the trail of bent grass by the wall where I crawled on hands and knees testing each stone for looseness! Luckily the trail isn't too long! Took a while but I got there. Thanks for placing this cache, close to where my daughter and I are horseriding for the school holidays. Lovely day made better with a cache.

Cache present and accounted for - although not in the first, or second... or third place I looked. A few loose ends here!! TFTC!!

Cache checked and still in original location

Not a good start to a day of caching.

Another great find while slowly heading to the Christchurch Mega.
Thanks for adding to the enjoyment of this trip.

Enjoying this lovely area.

SL TFTC drawp

New grit made this nearly impossible. Had to dig it out, and then hook it. Very lucky to see it at all. Perhaps note that it IS on the road side, not behind. TFTC.

A bit quieter up this road today so I thought I try my luck and with just the large windmills humming away I happily signed the log.
Thanks
erninz

Searched on the wrong side first before we decided to check the GPS again. And with the right spot the cache was soon in our hands.

A quick easy grab here. We then sat and worked out the coords for the 2 Mighty Oak puzzles we had enough info for.
Thanks for the cache [purple]Our cache find: #2596[/purple] | [green]Cache of the Day: 26/42[/green] | [blue]Cache of our trip: 103/170[/blue]

Where once there was the occasional orchard there are now acres of vines. Found the cache in quick time before a man who was exercising his dog.. from the comfort of his car, passed bye.

Spotted the cache before I had even put the handbrake on. Interesting to see grapes in this area.

Area has changed a bit since we lived this way. A nice bit of scenery though well worth the side trip.
TFTC

TFTC good little hide, little slimey nook

TFTC

13375… Lots of young vines at the Vineyards, TFTC.

wonderful 300th find! well done junior kruskopf thanks for the cache

Took a bit of time to find the right rock, but got there in the end. TFTC.

After shopping in Omaru on the way back i stop for some caches.
The weather was not perfect but so there where no muggels around.

TFTC from Germany

Koppa-s

TFTC

Annual maintenance check and still all go.

Quick find after a break in the weather and a chance to dry off TFTC

Log damp but sealed it up carefully! TFTC

Nice fence! TFTC.

Would have preferred a Chardonnay at the gate. TFTC

Grew up here so many memories

4th cache. Book was a wee but wet.

Some workers having lunch just across the fields, but able to get the job doen. TFTC

A fresh log book indeed, got all excited we had a FTF. Oh well, not to be. TNLN Thanks

A quick find on a big caching day from Christchurch with Kiwi Moose. Thanks for the hide.

Logbook replaced all go again.

4097. The log book is wet through - completely sodden. Sorry but we couldn't take time to dry it out and repair as the vineyard workers were sitting by their cars in the sun having lunch and we didn't want to rouse their interest in us.
Thanks
Iris & Rodney

Quick detour from the main road to put a few more smilies on our map. Looks like the sheep have shifted out and the vines have taken over TFTC.

Found during first day on a caching raid with Nofs. TFTC

Oh, that side.

A nice hide, and a good spot to visit, pleased to be making another visit to this part of the country.

Many thanks for the placement.

There are thousands of hectares in grapes now.

Easy find once we went up the correct road.

Another impressive entranceway

great entranceway

nicely laid out vinyard

Seems an unsual sight to see grapes up in here. TFTC

massive subdivision, wonder if they had to pay for the road seal.

When I first spied where the cache GZ my heart fell and I thought, "Oh no, I'll be here for ages". To my surprise the second place I looked came up trumps.

Quite a lot bigger detour in the darktime to this one - just for us! Would have been there a looooong time searching all the possibilities. Just as well for our 'helpful' companions! LOL TFTC

A quick find on the way through.

TFTC

Nice one

Troutburger did the hard work for this one,
Found while on a general area recce.
Cheers and thanks,
S.t.

Easy find TFTC

A quick easy find, despite the feeling of trepidation which always arises when we see a fence like this. TFTC

Quite a big operation for such a remote location.

An interesting development for this valley - I wonder how it'll get on.
No issues finding the cache. TFTC

Took a little hunting in the rocks to find it, but soon spotted a likely location and had it in hand. Cheers Gav [6473]

Some workers in the fields today so will try again

This couldn't have been in a handier spot today. Right where I wanted to park for the work I was doing today! Thanks!

Big caching run to Wanaka to maintain a couple of caches there, so thought I would do this on the way. A nice FTF fro me. Good wines from Kurow

Great Clear morning up the valley today, beaten to the cache by N!mrod.

Bitsprayer

Published