(Think) Outside the Square (North Otago) Hampden, South Island, New Zealand
By Heafudd on 08-Sep-13. Waypoint GC4N08C

Because of the conditions around cache we have decided to do away with this one.

will get down and fix it this week

On my way back from Invercargill and it was time to stop to stretch my legs and to be honest i did not expect to find this one but had to have a look anyway. I have never seen a cache like this so am awarding a favorite. Log to wet to sign so have sent pix to co TFTC

Since I knew exactly what I was looking for this time, I found it quite easily.
I had to empty water out of the outer box, and the pen is unusable. Managed to write my name and date on the dampish log. Thanks for the cache, Heafudd.

Ha! Found in about 5 seconds.

caching my way north until the gps batteries go flat.

In the early morning I had a walk through this pittoresc village. Meanwhile I collected some caches
Thanks for this cache and best wishes from Germany, kischte.

Wet log. New bag. Dried out as best we could.

GeoFoxy is in NZ to do a cruise but decided to stay with me for a few days. This is day 4 of her trip and she wanted to see the Geodesic boulders so a trip south was the plan for today and of course caching. This was what the title said - thanks for placing.

Had a hard time convincing KCN that it was where it was found. Container and log quite damp. We dried it out and put in new bag. Could still use some LTC from cache owner. TFTC

All 3 of us looking looking looking... We took some time but still nothing - even with some possibilities. Nearly gave up and then...Natalie247 came up with the cache. What a find! Good hide. TFTC Heafudd.

Found after 3 of us hunted for a while (nearly 30mins) made big assumptions on where it was, lol - at least the local muggles seemed amused by it. I should have put the gps down sooner and looked with my eyes more because I spotted something and I knew I should have followed my gut.

I knew a Geotour was coming out soon and glad to see we have some local ones. MinionOne and I were going to head out for a roadtrip and decided to invite Eve07 to come out for some fun. We headed out mid morning with the intent of just getting the Moeraki Geotour caches but we ended up as you do following a trail of caches to the middle of nowhere. A cold but lovely day for it.

Cache is in better condition now had to tip some water out .


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Followed the trail, got snagged by thorns, didn't see Russell, and didn't find the cache.

Perfect hide!
Logbook
TFTC
# 1335 July 19, 2019 16:37

Just leaving an hubby found good hide

Great hiding spot. Tftc

This is day four of a ten day trip down to Dunedin and back to move my daughter to Dunedin so she can get her master’s degree at Otago University.

I am now on the road heading north. I don’t need to make too many miles, so I can concentrate on a few caches.

Great idea for hiding a cache. TFTC.

Nice to find this one today. Spent a wee bit of time here once before with no luck. Today with a hint in hand was no trouble at all. TFTC

We failed to find this cache on a previous visit some years ago, but today it was a quick easy find. A really nice hide which gets a favourite from us. TFTC

Heute folgt der erste von 2 Transfertagen. Von Christchurch nach Dunedin, morgen dann nach Te Anau. Viele schöne Orte und einige Dosen konnten gefunden werden.

Greets from Switzerland

Day 2 in Newzealand. Today we drove from Christchurch to Dunedin.
A very beautiful Country with lovely places. We were able to find nice Caches and See Lots of interesting places.
Thank you for showing us this place.
Tftc

Took awhile
Found while we were leaving
Pleased to find this cache
Thanks on a trip with my sister NZ Bozzy to our auntie’s funeral in Christchurch- made a plan to grab some caches around here that we hadn’t found on previous trips
TFTC
Sorry for all the copies

Just as leaving had given up. Spent ages looking in the wrong place. Clever idea for a cache hiding place.

By luck, I walked right to it. NIcely done. I wonder if the people in the house know about it..

FP added.

Found at 17:04 - #8012 - on a 5 week trip in New Zealand

TFTC

Have been out and checked our caches today.All good here!
new log and container.

.

A tad too sneaky for me today and then the rain started. Onwards, for next time. Cheers

Just couldn’t nail this one. Off to do others in Hampden and might come back for a second look.

On our way home from Dunedin after a few days visiting kjr pulled in here for a quick find tftc
Have tried for this one before when the area wasn't so overgrown

Heading home from holiday with a few stops along the way of course! A wee detour in here to finally have a look as have driven past many times but there always seems to be people around. Today was in our favour so the search begins...and continues...and continues some more. Plenty of geo trails here but we weren't coming up with anything? Quite overgrown so was beginning to think perhaps it is buried somewhere. R & J went back to the car while I thought just one more look. That turned in to another 10 minutes so R came back just as I was investigating something a bit further. "Why don't you ................ Mum" and sure enough BINGO!!! So glad to persevere and have a smiley face here. TFTC

very overgrown tried and tried to find with no luck even with help from owner !! May need some tender loving care from owner

Day 8 - of our (The Seagnoid, Toby, Zara, & myself) epic adventure around amazing Oamaru. Moeraki Boulders have been explored - but what else can we find down here?
It was round and round in circles, following each other here, and retracing our steps. OK lets try another approach! Finally snag and tag this elusive one. Cheers

Taybeedragon and I headed south, still geofesting after the Oamaru... um... Geofest. Stopped off in Hampden on the way back.
Like many others, this took us a while. First we confidently followed the geotrail. Then we followed the other geotrail. Then back to the first one. Then made some new geotrails. then walk around in circles. staried at my feet for a bit, Then the dragon decideds to get methodical and finds it in an instant. Nicely done!
Dogs were barking at us from about 100m away. Yep, personal space is bigger than average ut here!

I so hate it when people say 'easy find' on a tricky cache so I apologise for doing just that. Today we fortunately just walked up to it and I tried something and whizzbang - found the cache. I quite surprised myself. This is a clever and unusual hide. Thanks for placing it Heafudd and for the enjoyment it added to our day today. After replacing it I looked back and again wondered what made me find it. I still don't know. I guess after all this I should award it a favourite point as it deserves it!! Cheers and happy caching!

One of our last caches for the day after our drive to Middlemarch to collect an old cache. Glad we decided not to leave it as it was one of the most interesting hides we have seen on our visit to the South Island. Thanks Heafudd for the effort you have put into this idea.

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. What a day this was going to be and a chance to have a good look around the area. It was amazing to wake up after having afull nights sleep and not have that sand in the eyes feeling and sore back from sleeping in the back of a car. Starting the day off working our way along the coast, followed by a spot of inland caching before making it back to Oamaru for a bite to eat followed by a bit more caching.

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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/)

***************************************************************

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 5: With a good nights sleep for the first time this trip, we were up early and out the door for another full days caching. The goal for today was to cache our way down to the Moeraki Boulders and then see where the next cache lead us. One thing we were looking out for today was caches which hadn't been found in a long time.

What an awesome hide, wandered around a bit before spotting something which prompted a bit more of a look. First time I've seen this type of hide.

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.

Nice hide

With 8 caches in Hampden I felt sure i could clean the area out. Nope. 6 from 8 today. This one was not a smilie.
Saw something that looked like it might be wrong but on closer inspection it ĺloked too real.
TFTC

Didn't spot it today

#14741. Troodles had pretty good idea of what we were looking for, and after a decent search she spotted it. Nicely done. TFTC.

Found with StreetWalkerNZ on day 7 of our road trip to the Oamaru Geofest, taking the scenic route, of course. Today we are travelling from Dunedin to Oamaru, via Middlemarch.
With our destination getting closer, this looked like an interesting one to stop for. By taking note of the terrain rating and the GPSr, it didn't take too long to track down this nicely hidden cache. A bit of water in both containers, but log book all good. TFTC.

Easy find ! Something just felt out of the ordinary ! Tftc

Sweet. Tftc

new log all good

Well this was probably our quickiest park and grab of the day. Mr b was very on to it today. log needs replacing as is wet still managed to sign name on log. fav point for something that is a bit different. On a 11 day caching trip around the south island. Log signed as b&p.Tftc Heafudd. Find # 3674

Given the previous logs I surprised myself by spotting this one quite quickly - you just need to keep your eyes open and trust your GPSr. I guess it does help that I have found other hides like this before... Signed log, TFTC

We tried thinking outside the square, the rectangle, the triangle - every shape you can think of.... with no luck. - Then, suddenly it all made sense and we were signing a very wet log!
TFTC

Searched and searched but found nothing that looked out of place or like the photo. Must of been too hard for us

16/01/2016 05:11 PM
# 6667
Had to pop down to Dunedin for the day - flew down in the morning, and then drove back!!

Was a bit tight for time, but I did need a cache for the day - preferably two! And we needed to have a bathroom break in hampden anyways, so decided that cache time it was!!

This one I actually managed to walk straight up to - something didn't look quite right here!! And sure enough

Consec Caching day # 1166

TFTC!!

A clever hide! We spotted the bit out of place but it's very cool and used team work to retrieve the cache. Fav point from us for originality

I enjoyed this cache. After searching the area for a few minutes i had the Eureka moment and cache was soon in hand, worth a fav point.

A bit of a search required for this find on our Mega Adventure. Even the presence of a previous finder wasn't much help to start with. Salamat!

Back in action so to speak!

going in for some maintenance and will be back soon

Late log, sorry -- only just found it on my phone.The daywalks were a bit ahead of me getting out of the car, and by the time I got there, they were wrestling like two dogs fighting over a bone. However, the two halves came apart to reveal the expected contents. As daywalk say, outer container now in plain view, so maybe a rethink from the CO is required.

TNLN. TFTC.

A quick stop on our way to Oamaru, in what is now a very familiar place to us . We had consulted a previous finder and knew that we just needed to keep on doing what we had been doing, but more forcefully. Mr D one side, Mrs D the other, one really good destructive tug and our nemesis bit the dust. But, this is now an obvious hide- the camouflage around the hide has gone and the camouflage inside the hide has gone - needs a bit of TLC.

I was really looking forward to this cache and wondered about what we might find. Found something straight away and I thought I wonder and there it was - almost disappointed at how quickly it was all over. Very clever - I loved it. TFTC #7166

Standing at GZ going its that or is it and it was. I love it. A favourite from us.

Long grass fav. Found with Moneydork on a road trip during his visit to NZ TFTC

This cache was one of 350 found on a short trip back to New Zealand, which was principally organised so that I could attend my Great Grandmother's 100th birthday.
I have a great time and enjoyed a great variety of caches, most of which were new (ie published in the past couple of years ).
Thanks for all the great caches.

Looks likes good time of year to find this cache.

No luck today, left and then thought about it some more and I'm now left wondering about something. Will have to return soon and give it go.

Nice hide. TFTC

TFTC an aha moment

Back to its usual self.

will go and sort it out this week

Took awhile, hand help from hill55. Clever spot, bit destroyed by water however.

Thought this could be challenging so really pleased we were able to log a find. Cache container & log wet so put another container & log book in the original container.
TFTC

No Luck with Sevren

Decided to have a little more extensive search of Hampden and try for all the caches in this small township on our way back to ChCh. Unfortunately this was the only one we did not find. Very well hidden.

Stopped for a cup of tea... and a bucketload of frustration... Found a square something (but that was in private property) and a circular something which we investigated almost to destruction.. but not quite enough [B)]. We will be back! Again!

Planned to do some caching in the North and caught up with Hinemoana. With the forecast for a nice day we set off to find some caches.
Nice warm day with some wind.
TFTC. SLB. TNLN.

YAY! YAY! YAY!

We had big caching plans for today with AT and were going to meet at six for a nice and early start Ten new caches published overnight?? How cool is that!! Ten FTF's later, we were on the roll, so decided to stop here on our caching adventures. What can I say?! TFTC I think!!!!

Come and join us at the next New Zealand Geocaching Mega event!! Register your interest at www.nzmega2015.com now!

Second visit, still no luck here for me Needs more thinking...

Was intrigued by this one so stopped for a gekko on our way past. GZ was on the grass only 1 m from the 4WD track, nowhere remotely near anything likely, unless it's a "very well camouflaged" like Skyline Walkway #2? or a Looking for Mr Sprite? or a Grumpy Stumpy? Sadly the lady was out so bribery was out. Spent a while quartering the grass, and then trolled away feeling positively cubical!

Our thinking today was clearly well within the square.

We must have not thought sufficiently outside of the square, will try to climb out of it next time to think!

No luck today. Maybe next year when I'm back and I'll give it more time

was down last week and is still snug as a bug

Many Thanks for the cache, Most I have done in a day for at least 8 months. - Bitsprayer

A very satisfying conclusion to an enjoyable trip south today.
The sun was in the West, the neighbour was in her deck chair laughing at another lot of searchers.
Right where I had looked last time, a clever hide.
Returned to the vehicle smiling and with great satisfaction was able to tell her the find was made.
Thanks
erninz

Still snug as a bug in a rug. Interesting, our "host" says there has been a lot of puzzled people, but there's not that many DNF's being logged!

Had a quick look the night before, and although as it transpires we were looking for the right thing, the GPS had us elsewhere. A quick find this morning, with GPS providing a better location. Nice hide gets a fav from us. TFTC

Didnt even find Russel- befuzzled")

Well done on those who did find it, we spent a while on it with no luck. Better luck next time I hope. Cheers

No luck today. Too imaginative a hide for today. Next time.......

Found with Schnitzel04. Asked the lady for a hint but initially refused, but eventually felt sorry for us and gave a small hint and found it. Would not have found without help, definitely outside the square.

Very imaginative spot.Tftc. Found with Waitaki999

still there waiting to be found

No success.

Opened one very unlikely hiding place (square) but nothing here. We will come back, but may have to check with the owner.

you should have said hi as she knows what is going on, she may have even given you a cuppa!!

A cursory look today as the neighbouring doors were wide open and the resident was out in the section. Will return and hopefully it will be quieter!
erninz

Early morning hunt for an elusive one. Checked all the usual spots and then had a wee brainwave and came up trumps on the 2nd attempt.
A sneaky wee bugger there CO, nice work.
Found with DebsNZ and Aoraki Sheep.
TFTC

Spent some time looking at all the usual spots and trying to 'think outside the square' which only left me scratching my head. It was Woody104 who discovered the sneaky hide of this one. I can say with some certainty that I would NEVER have looked there had I been by myself. Earns a favourite from me! Found with Aoraki Sheep and Woody104

A cunningly concealed hide and one that Woody104 was determined to find. Found with debsnz and Woody104

A very well hidden cache. TFTC

very very clever.tftc

Saw Russel but no sign of Maximus

Very clever hide. TFTC.

found with oil strike under the watchfull eyes of russel great cace and tftc