8th of 50 Must See Places - SOUTH AFRICAN SAFARI Weston Creek, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
By Sol de lune on 20-Jul-12. Waypoint GC3Q0G8

Well, the end has come. It has taken a little longer to get out and collect the caches, but today was the day.

A fun series that a few people managed to find. Number 1, Paris, was found the most - a total of 324 times, while number 38, Prague - was only found 231 times. Bit of a difference.

All caches, along with the attachment system, have been removed, with only one cache not found.

Thanks to all who visited the area and found the caches.....hope you enjoyed your walk/ride.

Ty

8/50. Never been to Africa, but I really want to. TFTC

My favourite city on the African continent.

This was a great starting point for my Geocoin. It has travelled to 3 other countries and after doing 59000 KM's it is now in Vail Arizona. Thanks to all who have helped it on its journey.

#4504 @0733
I learnt, via the Geocaching Canberra Facebook Group, that this series was soon to be archived, and therefore, became my #1 caching goal for this weekend. I parked near the first cache of this series and started out at 0645. I arrived back at the car at 1102 having completed the series, plus the extra one and another nearby cache. As I neared the end the temperatures were getting quite hot, and I welcomed each opportunity to be in the shade for a few seconds before moving on. Overall, well worth the effort as I'm planning on doing the Canberra100Challenge in March (just 50km for me). As I'm new to Canberra it was good to see more of the countryside, and the Australian fauna - just birds and insects today and a few Kangaroos.

I visited South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya with the family as an 11 year old.

My tally of places visited so far is 2/50. TFTC.

Did a suite of caches on the last day of the year along the 50 Must See Places power trail in an attempt to round out a middling year of geocaching - big plans for 2015, but not giving up on 2014 just yet! Met fellow cachers Liz and Bruce en passant and they were a team clearly destined for great things, particularly as they extended some cacher chivalry and dropped us back to our car on this warm Canberra day. Thanks for the set, we'll return one day and finish it off! TFTCs

With the end of the year looming and Brucie not needing too much of an excuse to push hard for our next major milestone the decision was made earlier in the week that if possible we would attempt this series to give us the numbers we needed. The day proved hotter than we expected but the walk was delightful. We did try a shortcut at one stage but ended up thwarted by a high fence. We saw one black snake, plenty of roos from extra large size to medium and lots of crickets. The hides were good and on most occasions we found them without any problem. A couple of the under rocks ones threw us till we read the hint. Happily I can say that many of the wonderful places on the list I have been fortunate enough to have visited in my many years of travel. A great series with a theme particularly close to our hearts [^][^] A few more caches were also found closeby to the series. Near the end of the trail we met up with a couple of Victorian cachers which was a lovely way to finish off. Thanks to Sol de lune for placing this cache.

I decided a while back it would be cool to hit 500 finds before the end of the year, but now just a few days out I found myself about 40 cache finds short. Time for a power trail ! Realistically, I have only two evenings to hit the mark - I'm still working during the break, and NYE is already spoken for. So I headed down to Coppins Crossing to give it my best shot. Luckily this evening was cool and being near the summer solstice, there was plenty of daylight left. I didn't hit the trail until about 1800 and was soon counting off the finds. I spotted a pattern in the way the caches were hidden which made the search a bit quicker - although not always easy. I think I found 25 in this run. I'll be back at it tomorrow - weather and opportunity hopefully permitting completion of this series. Thanks SDL for this series.

I did this entire series with my geomum and geodad. We started around 10 am and it was almost 5:00 pm by the time we got back to our geocar. All the caches were in good condition except for a few that weren’t hanging. When we first arrived at the start of the series we thought that it was not possible to do this series. We were going to turn back when we noticed the recent log entry the day before saying how it was possible to do this, so we decided to give it a go. It ended up being a bit of a disaster. We were forced to jump over one fence and had to turn back and come along the same path back to our geocar. It was not possible to do this as intended as we couldn’t find a trail from the last cache back to our starting point without being blocked by fencing, so we ended up having to cycle all the way back to the starting point. Maybe someone with local knowledge is aware of trails that are not on maps and can lay out a few waypoints to help other cachers.

I am 9 years old and I managed to do this series. So, while it’s possible, it’s a lot harder than it appears on the map due to the construction and the fencing. I think the only reason we were able to complete it is because it was during holidays and no one was working at the site. This trail is now more suited to our geofriends artemidorus1 and midmy7 who are regular cyclists.

Sorry for the cut and paste log. Thank you for placing this fantastic series of caches. Hopefully this series will not be lost to the construction.

Found the ENTIRE series today 1 through to 50 and then the extra one as well

I brought my bike down and started the ride at 9:30 am. I was not confident that I would find every cache in this series as due to the previous logs the nearby construction seems to have proved difficult for some people, and the series was talked about being archived a few months ago.

However to my surprise I did not have much trouble at all and found every cache in the series in about 4 hours

Thanks for this series, alot of work has gone into it. All caches seemed to be in good condition apart from a few that were missing their hooks and are no longer "Hanging" but they are all still at the correct coords.

Have barely been to any of these places as I am still quite young. So sorry I don't have much input Hopefully one day. (sorry for the generic logs)

Found it with my Dad on a hot day. It likes like we got out of sequence due to our chosen path. We'll have to come back and start at 7th.

Found it... Our new daily record of 6 in a day!!!

Tftc!

Easy to find and a lot of fun riding around here on a still sunny day! TFTC.

Enjoyed myself walk around the loops - took 6 hours to complete - saw many kangaroos, birds, river - the weather is very nice for me to walk... Signed the log. Thanks SDL.

Went for a caching hike on a nice Sunday afternoon with Gumby Maca. Realised we weren't alone when I noticed a travel bug on the window of a car in the same parking area.

I haven't visited South Africa (yet), let alone gone on safari.

[green]If I were to pick my 50 Must See Places, I reckon 46 of them world be in Australia [^] Another would be in Japan, but I don't reckon a South African Safari would make it on my list... did you know Australia has 842 extant bird species? Exploring the Lower Molonglo with [blue]Sumbloke[green] provided a great opportunity to ponder other destinations on our planet, whilst appreciating our own locale. [blue]Thanks for the series Sol de lune

Found the track again and could get back on the bikes once more. No problems with the cache. Annnd another bucket list item - although there are so many irresponsible animal tourism places.
Thanks Sol de lune

Found with AnnieG27 - coords off a little. No trackable in this cache...

TFTC - Found with HypoHippo3000. Have not been on a South African Safari, but have been treking in Kenya a few times and seen some wonderful animals!

Seen a few roo's along here, and talk about blackberries, this is another place I would like to go.
Thanks for the hide sol

Great idea ready for a day of geoing. Found with bluewattle and snickersallan.

Found with Bluewattle & Fit02, TFTC

Found with Bluewattle & Fit02, TFTC

Found with Snickersallan and Fit02

One of us was born in South Africa so has done a safari. Another of us had been to the Masi Mara do to a safari in Kenya which was also a fabulous experience also.

Found thisone even the GPS was pointing about 16m off....

Decided to do this cache trail after the Haunted series the night before. Dug out the trusty MTB again and spent about 2 hours out in the reserve... the afternoon followed a pattern of: memorise landmarks from static maps on the phone, pedal a short distance, stop, get off, find cache, SL, check phone... and repeat over and over

Went cross country for this one to after avoiding the closed off building site area from #7. It meant walking with the bike in one hand and a phone in the other!

Well what a wonderful series of caches. We did them with our two geokids aged 3 and 1. Caches easy to find and the 3 year old loved finding them before mummy and daddy did! The geoparents loved discussing the places that we had either been to or would like to visit. We felt quite pleased that we have been to 23 out of the 50 already which we felt pleased with. Yep done this one too!

9 of 78 for the day. Great series of caches. Fun day. I would like to do that one. Shoot a bunch of animals with my camera. Thanks Sol de lune for this series.

Was up for a challenge to do this along this track TFTC.

Found with Swifty on a nice day out. TFTC

8/25 found with GeoTerps on saturday 19/4

Found with PNLE on a very pleasant Sunday morning walk.
Going on safari is definitely a life experience worth pursuing. Although being pursued by an angry mother elephant is something perhaps to avoid!

Thanks for the cache Sol de lune.

Thanks

Mickeydv is South African born. I have never been to South Africa and have no desire to ever go. That could easily change. Thanks Sol de lune.

Interesting location due to the construction works

#2,535

Bikerbuddy & I drove to Canberra today specifically for this series of caches. We hadn't had much time for riding lately, and thought this series would give us both a fairly easy ride & some good caching.

We had a great time, found all of the caches, bikerbuddy had an easy ride & I got very tired.

Thanks Sol de lune

We had already been diverted from the road due to a construction site and had had to make our way across country to the previous cache in the series. Having found that, we were no where near a road, so we had to continue across country up the hill with our bikes. The coordinates for this one placed us in the middle of a couple of trees spaced out, so this was the first time we actually had to look in more than one place before we found the cache. Thanks

Found on a cycling caching adventure with Liv81 and allrounder.

Thanks for putting all the caches out there Sol de lune, we had fun!

1st found in the series. TFTC!

Here we go!

Found @ 12:21pm with Shadow! and Liv81 as we attempted to find all of the "Must See Places" series (including the two extras) on bike in what turned out to be quite warm and muggy conditions. We did them in order so this was 8th of the 52 attempted with 1 DNF, taking 4hrs from start to finish.

For some reason the coords were 15m out for me but it was easily found.

Have I been to this location: No

If not, would I like to go to this location: No

Thanks again Sol de lune

This entry was edited by allrounder on Tuesday, 11 March 2014 at 10:26:09 UTC.

This entry was edited by allrounder on Tuesday, 11 March 2014 at 10:26:25 UTC.

7 of 52 caches found with allrounder and Shadow!

Safari is definitely on the list!

TFTC...

An overcast day was ideal for walking this series even if it was a bit humid. Started fairly early and had them all in hand except one by 1pm. The exception was No7 which is now within the bounds of a construction exclusion zone. The cache may in fact be a goner? Thanks for an enjoyable walk. I doubt that any finders of this series will ever be fortunate enough to visit all these locations. I am fortunate enough to have seen several. Haven't been on safari. TFTC

I commenced my walk starting at No. 21 heading towards 1. After dropping the car at the recommended parking area, Bill was taking his bike & riding from 50-22. He couldn't get his GPS to work so he walked to meet up with me. At number 7 the gate was open, Bill returned to get the car & we completed the rest of the series in air conditioned comfort.
We enjoyed doing the series, all caches we found were in good condition.
We love to do this one day.
Thanks for placing this series Sol de lune

Found 3:34 pm. TFTC. Number 7 is really close now. No TB present.

Found a 13:21- TftC

TFTC

Another to add to the list, and so far well on track to get the 50.
Found with Carrumel and Dan.

* Another thing that's on my bucket list, and fairly high on it too

Thanks for the cache!

Treck inland

Good Find

A couple of hours on Australia Day afternoon was the perfect time for a trip 1/3 of the way around the world. Armed to the teeth with my trusty geo-pencil and geo-iPhone hooked up to a monster 15,600mAh Hyperjuice Plug (battery pack) (golly the GPS usage by the phone sucks the power), I tripped backwards from the 15th Must See Place to the 1st Must See Place. I'm beginning to appreciate the $ investment the COs put in for our enjoyment. TFTCs.

Found on a ride around the world with the geokids. TFTC

Attempted this trail as I needed to get some caches as I hadn't been caching for a while. TFTC

Another found to achieve our aim - 100 caches in Australia.

Thanks for the series
ciao, die Limbacher

This year we have a long winter holiday when we are travelling in the Pacific. We are doing sightseeing and geocaching. Now we will spend a six week period in Australia where we will drive from Melbourne to Murray Bridge and then via Grampians to Canberra, Sidney and Brisbane.

Before we left Canberra we wanted to take a walk and at the same time pic some caches. The weather was a bit grey so our choise became this trail. We only did a part of it (1-23, 46-50 and the two extra). It took us 2,5 hours and we walked 8,5 km.

We found all cache on our way, some of them on the ground.

We had visited a lot of the places in the list. For some of them we agree that it is a "Must see place" and for others we do not agree at all.

One of the best trips we have done was to Tanzania and a safari. It is so amazing with all the animals.

When we come close to this South African Safari cache we heard some noice in the bushes and there was three kangaroos. Amazing.

Thanks for the cache. Greetings from Sweden / Geparderna

This entry was edited by Geparderna on Friday, 10 January 2014 at 09:59:16 UTC.

Thought I'd beef up my cache tally and meaning to do this for some time. Took 4.5 hrs by
bike and that includes all 50 and Ranger range/ All rivers Run/ and the Two extras.
Not sure how long these will last as civilization is quickly incurring on a few of these caches:-(
This series had the lot, Hills, rocks, nasty bugs, quick finds, harder finds, colour coded caches,
one or two with broken lids, one or two fallen off the wire, and for tall or short people.
A pleasant start at 7.15am to get out of the heat and by the end happy to finish:-) Cheers.

A quick find and we are off on our round the world race.
the only wildlife we saw were flies!!!!!
TFTC

2013-12-17 10:39 With a few days here in the ACT to spare I took a look at the map and thought, that looks like a series. Sure enough it was. Set out this morning with the aim of completing all 50. Made it through them in about 4hrs15mins. It was getting quite warm out with a forecast of 30 so once the 50 were complete it was time to get out of the sun. My thanks to Sol de lune for the series.

I decided I wanted to increase my cache total and this looked like an excellent way to do that quickly. That's it for me today - too hot Thanks Sol de lune

Bit tricky not in right spot! Good Luck!!!

I think the man involved in the road works nearby wondered why small groups of people keep wandering past.

That’s one more find for me! Thanks so much for hiding this geocache.

That’s one more find for me! Thanks so much for hiding this geocache.

That’s one more find for me! Thanks so much for hiding this geocache.

Tools abut to find but got there in the end.

Wanted to do this loop and had thought to do it Tuesday 26 November but a quick check of weather changed my mind and am so glad as it was quite warm enough this afternoon. Thought I may have to break it into two parts but am pleased to have completed it in one go. A great chance to try to get to know Little Red Riding Hood (my new GPS) a bit better and I did but the clouds this afternoon set her off a little, but by then I was well on course to understand Sol de lune's methods. At first I wondered about the indicator for the hanging mechanism on some, but soon realised its importance when trying to replace the caches. Was actually taking more time to open, sign log and to replace it, than to walk from one cache to the next. (Well a little exaggeration maybe - but I managed to improve that eventually.) If I didn't find the caches quickly I realised that I had presumed that I knew where they were and soon rechecked and discovered I was at the wrong spot. Not surprising that some tracks are starting to show as people try to avoid the blackberries. I think it is going to take more time to complete this logging process than it was to walk the circuit as I try to strain the brain for comments on each location that we are fortunate enough to have visited. Many, many thanks for this wonderful circuit Sol de lune. Happy Christmas to you Santa.

South African Safari: Has been on my bucket list for quite a while. Would love to take the gorgeous grandson.

The focus of today was the 50 Must See Places series. I had seen it on a map of Canberra and thought that I might do it in my holidays, on the way back from Port Macquarie. So today was the day. It was an excellent day for it to, with mainly sunny skies but not too hot and a cool breeze.

My thanks to Sol de lune for the cache.

This one is possibly not in our top 50 list. While seeing the animals live would be nice and the country at dusk and dawn is beautiful there are other things we would prefer to do and see if we make it to South Africa.
Another one down and the flies still hanging around.

Set off around one PM after a late start to the day. Good walk! Remember to take sunscreen with you, the meeples are a bit pink after three hours wandering around in the sun.

Haven't been to Africa at all, it's on the list. Maybe a photo safari rather than a hunting one though!

There were no trackables in this cache.

I set off with the intent of finding all 52 caches in this series. My aim was to complete this mission in under 5 hours. I wanted to find 10 per hour, or there abouts. A bike mount for my GPS had arrived in the mail just the day before, so I had to test it out. My bike hadn’t seen daylight for ages, but it should be OK. The weather wasn’t looking too good after the snap cold that had just set in, but I was ready to take a chance. I grabbed my beany instead of my helmet. The sky was dark with grey clouds, and at 8.28am I set off. Finding some of these caches reminded me of hanging picture frames on my wall, not sure why. Anyway, after cache #9 I sheltered from some rain under a tree for 9 minutes. Between cache #16 & #17 the brakes on my bike needed adjusting, luckily I had some basic tools. Then it was the bike seat, it became loose. Had to tighten it. At cache #22 more brake problems. This repair delayed me another 8 minutes. Cache #34 took me the longest to find: 15 minutes, but most caches were found within afew minutes. At cache #48 my GPS ran out of juice. Lucky I had a spare set. Cache #52 was logged after 4 hours and 15 minutes. Total distance according to my GPS was 14.4 kms. I enjoyed every second of too. Except for the thorns. And the uphills. Oh yeah, top 50. I won’t log each cache individually, but if you need a place to stay in Christchurch, New Zealand, Airport Birches Motel in Russley is the place. I stayed there in 2005 and the service and location are the best you’ll ever find. Thanks again Sol de lune for this series. Now I just have to jump back on my bike and do this another 51 times…

Done

8th in the series and 6th for the day. Still heading uphill and the views are starting to open up.
TFTF

Merry xmas

Now a safari I could enjoy, chance of doing it, almost zero..

Veni, vidi, scripsi

Seven down

#955 - 07:50; The eighth in the series completed after an early start in the hunt for find number 1000. Having been abandoned by my fellow cachers mastahdemoli and Canberrachick and with Rapidlywild and specimenX running rampant in the Riverina I was doing it solo. It was a beautiful morning and just me, the roos and the birds while I headed around to see what I could see! I read a James Patterson novel a few months ago which would have put paid to any thoughts of heading into the wilds of Africa, but gee, a safari has much to recommend it. Just need to be careful around the Hippos as they kill more people each year than the lions do (need to put a good word in for the namesakes!). TFTC Sol de Lune

Kruger NP. Didn't get to see the lion but did see everything else on the wish list including the cheeta.

A great day to go riding the some of the tracks of Stromlo. Plan is to find all fifty in this series plus any other nearby whilst enroute. Thanks Sol de lune.

TFTC

Geocache #545.
Found on Sunday, 8th September 2013 at 6:45 AM.
Conditions: clear.
Current streak #39 days.
Today's finds 9 of 82.

My 444th find for The Great Scouts Australia Geocaching Competition 2013. With just over a week of the competition remaining, I had some leave owing and decided to take it for a geo-adventure in the Australian Capital Territory and Canberra. What a way to celebrate Canberra's centenary, as well as the Federal election!

Officially day one of my trip and the night before I made the plan to tackle the 50 Must See Places power trail to begin with. I set off from my hotel at about 5:45 AM and left the car at the suggested parking site to start at number one. Once at GZ, it was a quick find and I soon had the CIH and log signed. TFTC Sol de lune.

The co-ordinates appeared to be about 12m according to my GPS.

"JordsAU

An early morning start for us and Delta Response Team and with four of us on bikes we had a great day riding around. It's a pity that this area will no longer be available caches like this but I am sure other will replace them.

A little steeper to this one! - TFTC

Cache # 8 for today,

A Plan was hatched with JuSoJaRa and Diamantina Stars to go out for a day of Power trail blitzing. Thins included the 50 Places and NRL series. A 6.30 pick up meant we had a nice early start.

Still going.. at this point I still had lots of energy left.

TFTC

It's strange that this cache series is not in the top ten things to see in the world.

Found with ucanfindmojo and pirry after lego expo

Found this after the lego expo 2013

Found with Mandi and Pirry

Nice day to do this kind of trek. Thanks for the adventure

With Mandi and UCanFindMojo

TFTC

Nice day to do this kind of trek. Thanks for the adventure

With Mandi and UCanFindMojo

TFTC

This entry was edited by pirry on Thursday, 15 August 2013 at 12:11:37 UTC.

Found and logged at 9:09
One of 55 cache for a day of caching while completing the Must See Places
I have forgotten how cold and windy can get
Thanks Sol de lune
Lgoody

GSAGC #618. I was in Canberra for an International Team meeting so planned to tackle the 50 Must See Places series of caches on Friday 2nd August. Had hoped to finish all 50 in one day but started out a bit late so decided to go in reverse order to give myself a Uriarra Road bailout option.

I began with #1 & #2 then jumped across to Another Extra, An Extra, followed by #50 to #17 - 38 in total and a new daily record Had to call it a day at this point but I returned for an hour to complete the series before my Sunday evening flight home to Perth. I thoroughly enjoyed this series and was most impressed that all the co-ords (with just 1 exception) were absolutely spot on. The containers were also of a good size and easily found. Whilst the scenery was somewhat bland, I enjoyed the invigorating walk through the rolling hills of the Molonglo Nature Reserve.

Did the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi safari during our epic Indian Ocean voyage in 2009. Can't wait to do another - maybe in Kenya next time I've also rewarded this series with a FAV point and Scout Pathtag 01 at the 50th of 50 Must See Places - Zanzibar. Bravo Sol de lune for the great effort that you have put in to this very entertaining series of caches. However, I suggest that you subtitle this series "Scrambles through the Brambles"

Go on safari at sunset and watch the elephants while sipping a glass of champagne, magic.

Our 6942nd overall find.

My usual partners in crime had already completed this series so with a work trip on Friday, I decided to stay an extra night and complete it before heading home. The weather forecast all week didn't really have me too excited and as I woke this morning to the sound of rain I stayed in bed a little longer.

I kicked off the day at 8:20, the sun was shining I could see blue sky and best of all there was no rain. As the day went on I had rain and a bit more rain. The best bit is that only one cache was a bit damp and it didn't take me too long to get the feel for the hides.

The saddest thing was that I realised how many places I still need to visit!

Thanks Sol de lune for the cache and the series.

Not quite as nice on this side, a bit closer to the road and a bit more cleared

Certainly not a bore thx SDL

This was a nice quick and easy find by Geoson.
TFTC Sol de lune