Log This One (Wairarapa) Pongaroa, North Island, New Zealand
By skindo on 04-Dec-12. Waypoint GC42XQR

Planning to attend an event at Pahiatua this evening so decided to do some of the backcountry road as I had the afternoon off. Last time we had to miss Towai road. Today managed to find all but one of these caches. Spectacular view particularly from the summit. Quick find. Cache and log all fine. Thanks.

TFTC

Found this by instinct and title as my gps was 5m out. Left a trinket. Tftc

I thought it was time I did another clean up of the Northern Wairarapa area, particularly the 52 on 52 series and others nearby. I did many of the 52 on 52 caches before the series was created and their names changed to match - but that is all old history, about 9 or 10 years ago. Since a lot of caches have been archived in recent years, but many are still there and in good condition, I decided to try to find a few that looked likely to still be there - particulalry skindo caches where I had already solved the puzzle. The end result was a 12 hour round trip from Wellington, with 87 finds (of which 17 were archived caches).

TFTC skindo

Another straightforward find. Thanks for placing the cache

#8361. I had been looking forward to todays geocaching adventure for weeks. I love exploring the back roads of Wairarapa and southern Hawkes Bay and the gravel roads north of Route 52 are certainly in the category of "the road less travelled." I had mapped out a long trail of mainly skindo caches to find starting at Rimu Road and taking us up around Waihi Valley Road, Towai Road and Waitahora Roads. Barefootguru joined me on the quest today and we left Wellington at 7 am and reached Rimu Road at 9.55 am. We got back to Wellington via Dannevirke and Palmerston North at 9.30 pm. The weather on Friday was horrible with rain and hail showers and strong winds. But Saturday dawned clear and sunny and the Tararuas looked magic with a fresh coating of snow all over the tops and snow sprinkled over the upper beech forest, below the tops. Lots lambs in the paddocks, kowhai was starting to flower and there were plenty of birds singing for me to record for the NZ Bird Atlas.

The wind was picking up as we climbed up this hill. Certainly getting cold enough again to put our sweatshirts back on. BFG headed off towards GZ and by the time I caught him up he had the cache in hand. Nice hiding spot. Signed the logbook and replaced everything as found. Thanks skindo for the huge effort you made to put geocaching onto the map of the Wairarapa. Cheers GSEL

Quick find once phone had decided which side of road. Almost pristine log! Thanks skindo!

Today we made a Spring caching sojourn deep into the Wairarapa, on what worked out as quite a nice loop - along the Pahiatua-Pongaroa Rd, Coonoor Rd, up and along Towai Rd, a slight deviation to Waihi Falls, then along Waihi Valley Rd until we came back to the Pahiatua-Pongaroa Rd and homeward, with a deviation up Rimu Rd and back.
We chose today because the weather was promising and the day did stay fine, but was extremely windy in places, especially up in the Puketoi Range. There were many wonderful views painted in blues, purples, dark greens and soft green and lemon spring colours. And then there were the spectacular Waihi Falls. Rangiora trees flowered in abundance and there were odd patches of beautiful white native clematis. We saw plenty of lambs, and several magpie families. It was great to be out amongst it all.
The success rate for our caching was 100%, so it was a very satisfying day in all respects. All the caches had accurate co-ordinates - very helpful. Thank you to skindo for bringing us this way.

This cache was a quick find with no problems, but the wind was sure roaring through here today. TFTC

#11,285. Park and grab on Towai Road in Waione. GZ was all quiet at the time of our visit. Quick find. The cache was in good condition, all nice and dry inside. Took nothing, left nothing, signed log.

Thanks for the placement, and for bringing us to this site, and …

.T h a n k s. .f o r. .t h e. .c a c h e.
.M a u r u u r u. .k o e. .n u i. .a t u. .h o k i. .t e. .k e t e r o k i.

Good coordinates and neatly hidden. Enjoying the spectacular views along Towai Road on this fine, calm winter's day. A favourite for this one and for the series. Thanks skindo.

Another great day out in the countryside. All good here. Cheers and TFTC

Today's hunt for caches are those that are a few kms south of Dannevirke. I try to individualise each log where I can apart from the generic first line.

The road was rather muddy where I stopped for this cache.

Cheers for the cache.

On a Queens Birthday caching trip, getting some ungot Skindo caches.

One day out of a four day long weekend for geocaching was not much to ask for? An early start for us at 7.25am. A long day with 39 finds and 3 dnfs. Gravel winding roads in the Wairarapa picking up out of the place scattered caches - but the day was beautiful and no wind (except at the very top of somewhere in the wops lol). A highlight was getting to Pongaroa Hotel hoping for some chips and a beer on Good Sunday. Huh! Not a park in sight. Turned out it was an Easter Hunt weigh in between 1-3pm. OMG the wild pigs, deer, goats and rabbits in the back of farm wagons was an incredible sight to see. The kids had an obstacle race where they had to run it with a dead rabbit in each hand. Stopped for a while, skipped queuing for food and drink and on our way. Again in the middle of god knows where on a narrow winding gravel road when we stopped for a cache (thank GOD) when a large convoy of four wheel drivers (?) came belting along towards up. Then the last couple of hours we had our hearts in our mouth realising we were very short of petrol and whether many petrol stations would be open on Easter Sunday. Made it via a back road to Pahiatua where the BP was open! So I didn't really enjoy the afternoon - bit t stressful for me. A great but tiring day. Thanks to all the CO owners.

Can't believe how clean and dry all these logs are. All good here. Tftc

TFTC. Another cache where the Android beat the apple... not that I'm gloating or anything...

Might help if I keep looking at the GPS to see how the metres are changing!!! Went to the wrong log!!! TFTC

Quick find where all good at GZ. Thanks for another smilie.


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Thanks to the Cache Owner who has gone to the trouble of creating this cache, determining the coordinates and then averaging them to make sure they are accurate, placing the cache and registering it online for our enjoyment. Without Cache Owners doing their bit, there wouldn't be a fun hobby that we all love - so again a big THANK YOU. For our bit, all we need to do is find and log the cache that was carefully placed for our personal enjoyment. As we log it we should consider that the Cache Owner also needs to maintain it - when the log sheet fills up, they must replace it. When the container becomes full of water, they need to empty it. When the container is broken, they need to repair it. When it goes missing they need to find or replace it. Well..... the great news is we can do our bit too - make sure your log doesn't take an entire page - just a name and date. If full of water, empty and dry the cache as best as possible. Be careful when handling the cache and make sure you replace it where you found it. If it has a bag, seal it. Just remember - the Cache Owner showed respect to you by placing the cache - please respect them and fellow cachers that follow you by being careful with the cache. And if you have a spare log sheet and the cache you are at needs one, please leave it behind. Finally, if the cache does need maintenance, please let the Cache Owner know - you can log a Maintenance Log or you can drop a line to the Cache Owner. Above all - have fun and remember the Geocaching Code.

Logging this one now.tftc

So so windy up here. Found the log tftc

A nice quick find

Found on a fun road trip with Jodiporsche. What an adventure.
TFTC!

On a geo-caching road trip. Weather much better today.

Enjoying collecting the caches on these shingle roads. A really pretty area.

TFTC

Another quick find in a lovely area - tftc

found while down in the area for a caching week.
Am enjoying finding all the caches

TFTC

Another quick find and still pretty windy. TFTC

Operation 997.
After our recent mission to the November snow I realized I was now within 47 caches of 1000. The idea was then conceived to get three under 1000 (997) in order to get cache 1000 in Rarotonga at the end of November or early December. To get these last 44 we headed to Wairarapa (AKA Skindo Land) to pick up mostly park and grabs. The planned route had 49 to allow for DNFs, of which we used four. The mission took longer than expected but it was an interesting day - from getting stuck behind cows and then sheep through to an awesome lunch in Pongaroa - all in nice weather.

Searched the a few potential spots in the wrong area initially before spotting the likely hide. Nicely done hide.
T F T C Skindo.

As said in Tommygun9's log below we embarked on a mission to collect 44 caches before our holiday/ honeymoon to Rarotonga. I had a lot of Skindo puzzles sitting solved so I searched out a route to collect the required number of caches- and didn't end up going past a single puzzle cache! (Oh well, looks like another mission will be needed).
TFTC

Found with Paua during our two day cache hunt in the Wairarapa. TFTC.

We were to do a caching tramp today but as we are not trampers and the weather didn't look flash we will save them for another day, instead we jumped in the ute and thought to come over here for the day.
we managed 32 caches today with ten dnf in 4.5 hours.
with many gravel roads it made a slower trip but a nice one, I have added handmade swag to all of the caches found and our calling card, hubby spent the last 6 caches in the ute very unhappy and only half dressed to what he would call standing in the worlds largest/smelliest dog poo, glad no cops pulled us over while he was sitting in his undies, which caused me to be doubled over in laughter for the next 30min.. thanks for the caches - sorry about the copy and paste of the logs

Headed out on the first flight to Wellington Saturday morning with FMZ and Lostcourse. Relocating a vehicle back to Auckland meant we had a big caching road trip ahead of us...! We headed back through the Wairarapa towards Napier, clocking up the numbers through skindo land. Sorry for the copy/paste log as its now all abit of a blur having cached for 36 hours with only a few short naps in between. Enjoyed the drive through these rough and winding gravel roads and saw alot of interesting sights.

36 hours, 1,200km, & 315 finds made for an epic adventure! Many thanks for the cache and the perfect excuse to make a weekend of it!

Took the first flight down to Wellington on Saturday for a fly-down-drive-back-caching weekend with mike-miss and FMZ - basically a caching raid across the North Island.Team FML! for the win! We headed out of Wellington making a beeline for the Wairarapa and Hawkes Bay before venturing back to Auckland. We headed through a bunch of interesting winding back roads and saw a lot of beautiful sights and historic spots that only geocaching could have bought us too. We shared the duties around and took a few micro naps when ever prudent. Saturday was my biggest caching day ever, and this February, is easily my biggest month ever. Cheers for the cache placement!

Headed down to Wellington for a fly-down-drive-back-caching weekend with mike-miss and Lostcourse - basically a caching binge drive back to Auckland, caching under the moniker "Team F.M.L." We headed out of Wellington as quickly as possible to get some serious caching done in the Wairarapa and Hawkes Bay before heading back to Auckland. Apologies for the copy/paste log, but we found >310 caches in 36 hours and for many it's hard to remember specific details. We headed through a bunch of interesting winding back roads and saw a lot of beautiful sights and historic spots. We shared the driving and stopped for about an hour to catch some shut eye in Pongaroa before continuing, caching all the way. Saturday was my biggest caching day ever, and this Feb, after just the first 36 hours, is already my biggest month ever. TFTC!!!

Lovely drive in the country picking up caches, thanks for all the fun

TFTC

Logged this one. TFTC skindo

Mega Weekend

It all started about a month ago when Cats&Dragons brought up the idea of heading down the line to collect 350+ caches. We both had targets that we wanted to meet before attending the NZ Mega. Plans and locations were drawn up and puzzles were begun to be solved. It took me a while to get my head around a few of the puzzles and with the help of a cacher I was soon on a roll.

The weekend finally came and we departed Hamilton at 6pm on a Friday night. 3days, 2,000km, & 11hrs sleep, later 472 caches collected. Thanks to all those who's caches I found especially Skindo with a huge number laid.

A MEGA Adventure

Both Nova Lightning and myself had set ourselves caching targets that we were hoping to meet in time for the NZMEGA in a few weeks. So with a plan in progress and fuel in the tank away we set.
Departed home at 6pm Friday, returned home 3.30pm Monday, 7 hours sleep approx 470 caches and a great adventure.

Thanks to all those that have placed caches especially Skindo as I think we gave his caches a bit of a nudge

Thanks for a great weekend of Caching and Bull.

A quick find on a long day's caching in the area. Very enjoyable countryside. Signed log, TFTC

With the Seagnoid on Skindo's cache trail down Route 52 to Pongaroa and side roads, and now up Towai Road. Thanks for the cache.

[green] With Popmac on the way home from a Gisborne geocaching / daffodil trip. Popmac grows daffodils and took a bunch to a daffodil tournament thingy in Gisborne with plans to cache along the way, and I came along for the ride. He won $100! Covers part of the petrol costs! Which helps, as we are taking the long way home.
And this time it is my turn to say "not here" and Popmac's to say "So what's this then?" Arrrgh!! Cool log though.

this looks like a nice spot to camp up for the night last one for me today thank you Skindo I do enjoy getting out down these back roads

10941...

Very windy location... but we managed to Log This One, TFTC.

consider it logged - & a great looking log it was too!
Left a pet rock - a chick in an egg. TFTC

A quick find on a fairly long drive in the area today. Great fun to visit a good number of caches, and also enjoy the interesting and varied landscapes along the way.

Many thanks for the placement.

#4634. Was a bit nervous about being amongst pine trees in a gale force nor wester, so didn't linger. TFTC.

Getting near the end of the trail, through interesting countryside with good views.
TFTC.

*FTF* Pleased to get some of the new ones in the area.

Good drive through the valley and easy find in a good spot.
Rain started and getting dark

SL TFTC

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