The 'I Hate Shopping' Series - BTC #5 - Auckland Auckland, North Island, New Zealand
By keylev on 10-Jul-14. Waypoint GC58JT1

Time for this one to go...thanks for hunting!

Need help couldnt find !

Nothing

Did not find

Looked high and low, under brush, but could not find.

It's rather elusive indeed

Couldn’t find

Came back and had a feel around...
And FOUND IT! wahooo
Great idea!
Minty Freash!

Dnf

Good job only found the remains but not the container

Looked for about 20 minutes and was unsuccessful was looking up and down the bank continuously

Searched for quarter of an hour on both levels, behind all posts I the area, but no cache at all. Tried to narrow things down using satellite, but it kept bringing me back to the same place that had no cache.

Out here looking like a car thief or weirdo but found the cache! I don't like shopping either but the library here is neat. I'm trying to be more social out in public but end up scouting through wildlife looking for caches but it's more fun. TFTC!

Scrambled up the bank, looked all around and was about to give up when spotted near where I had started, TFTC

A quick look with a 4 year old and it didn’t instantly reveal itself, so we had to leave it

Neat spot, TFTC!

Ruffians! Nice cache!

TFTC 2piglets could not find so daddy pig helped them

After re-reading the hint the find was made! Good one TFTC

Ryan was out this way for a lunch meeting and with a little bit of time to fill in he picked up a couple of caches. He had no problems here. Thanks

Thanks. A bit too wet for scribbling in log but otherwise all good. Really not a hot summer to sort out all the damp caches.

It took a while to find it. Was not sure about levels upper or higher .... TFTC

Yay, great to turn my dnf into a smiley face. Thanks for replacing the cache.

Many thanks for your cache that saved my geocaching day on this wet wet wet Sunday.

Took me longer than it should have. My only comeback is that there are many possible places and I was thinking slightly differently to CO.
Log is quite wet, but still signable - just.
TFTC!
Oh yes, I hate shopping too!

The weather looked good so I did a little tour and grab a couple of Caches. Some of them were quickly spotted, others took me longer.
Took me a while to spot this one.
Thanks for hiding!

Lunch time outing collecting a couple of caches for our daily streak. Initially approached from the wrong level. After a short walk cache was quickly in hand. Log damp. May need some TLC. TFTC

Nicely hidden but log very damp - may need replacing.

Out for a nights caching with Team BOP which consisted of Philip.Pery, Tnxpro,Squirrel nutcase amd myself didnt really have a plan as such just headed for Auckland and followed the caches. Cache in good condition.
Great night home by 630am for some sleep.
Tftc

Team BOP hit the Waikato area until we got bored with Hamilton. We decided to head to Auckland at 10:30pm for a bit of night caching. We kept going until 3:30am and decided we better return home to Tauranga before we got too tired.
Had the place to ourselves tonight so made for a quick find.
TFTC

With a break in the weather this was the perfect weekend for geocaching. I had no plans so with the help of TNXPro and Squirrelnutcase we sought out a worthy adventure heading West to help Squirrel clear his map. What no one knew at the time was this adventure would morph to span 21 hours, cover 3 regions and we'd have Davidson clan join us at the half way point just in time for the Auckland leg of our journey. A crazy day but there's no denying - it's a lot more fun with friends!

With the sun well and truly gone we had the place to ourselves which was good as I can imagine this would be a busy place in the day. The cache was found quickly and in good condition thanks to accurate coords and a straight forward hint. Cheers keylev, TFTC

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With (Mr) Davidson clan, Philip.Perry, and TNXPro...

Our caching adventure quickly morphed into an all night mission in East Auckland. We were looking for an area with a good spread of caches that didn't require a lot of driving from point to point. Botany Town seemed perfect... As with most nighttime missions, cache finds quickly become a blur as there is not much to focus on other than making the find. My lasting memory of tonight will be enjoying the company of our group, mixed with very cold, wet feet from walking across boggy ground.

Thought we might have a bit of grief searching for this one in the expansive gardens. No problem with everyone searching... TFTC.

Out collecting a few caches today even though this was a simple enough find it took us a little while but soon came across it in the nice snug hole.

??

After attending the 90th birthday celebration of Mark's mother this afternoon, we headed off to make a few cache finds to increase our finds tally for March 25th. With not a lot of daylight left we headed into the park for our first 3 finds, then opted to head for street hides for the last 5 we wanted. Unfortunately we didn't have much success with the frst three 'I Hate Shopping' caches, with 2 being disabled an the 3rd clearly missing due to redevelopment. It was a case of 4th time lucky here, after parking and walking around to street level. Thanks.

Good find to fill in time while one of the young howonearthers is getting a hair cut. I couldn't find this a month or so ago so nice to find today and find quickly.

Found while out with nonn007. Great idea as I'm not a shopping fan too. Tftc

TFTC
Found with gladnz

Nice easy find lots of posts
Tftc

A fantastic day out cacher hunting with the family, cache and log in good condition, thank you for placing the cache

I hate shopping too but had to go and sort out the back to school stationery for the kids so why not make it a little better by finding a cache The GPS on my phone was bouncing a little so I checked a few spots before finally spying the cache TFTC!

Found today was easy to find but note book was wet.

Out for some Christmas day caches. It was pretty easy to find parking spots that were close today. Thanks! Nice hiding spot.

When you line things up on satellite view and narrow GZ down to the right spot, the find becomes a lot easier. Tftc

TFTC

Stopped by on the way to work. No-one on the footpath, but lots of cars instead. Zoned in on GZ, initially nothing. Widened the search, still nothing. Went back to GZ, and it was right there, nicely tucked away. I had been looking for something a bit bigger. All signed and returned. TFTC

I had actually attempted finding this cache on two occasions in the past... both on which Mrs Sherlock was shopping and I was wasn't. However, on both occasions I was interrupted by muggle traffic and because of this I never logged a DNF as I felt that I hadn't actually finished searching. Anyway, today presented yet another opportunity when Mrs Sherlock wanted to go shopping yet again. So after she disappeared into the mall, I made my way to GZ only to see that GZ had in fact just been trimmed and pruned back by gardeners. And there out in the open was the cache. Upon further inspection the cache is in good condition... and so after signing the log I tucked it back nicely. Just in time too... as along the path came a muggle walking her dog. So thank you keylev for taking the time to set up this cache. As always I appreciate your efforts.

After a tough week had been needing to get the hell out of Hamilton for a bit and grab a few numbers. So leaving home at 5am with HKCB we had a route all planned and goals in mind we headed for a few caches in south Auckland along with working our way up towards Botany.
When we left home it was dark, when we arrived home it was dark, so all in all not a bad days caching with 52 caches found along the way. There were lots of laughs and solving of the worlds problems along the way, but the one thing neither of us could grasp was how can people bear to live in such a rabbit warren? still that remains a question for the universe.

Thanks to all the cache owners for putting them out and continuing with the maintenance

I was invited to head out with C&D on another caching trip, this time to Auckland to focus on the hides in the Dannemora and Flast Bush areas, plus a couple of other cache clusters a bit further South. An early start meant we got the most out of the day with over 50 finds, on a wide range of caches, which varied the day nicely. I myself had no specific plan for the day, bar there were a couple of puzzle caches in the area which I had solved and was hoping to finally claim the smilie for.

All in all another great day out caching, with the weather gods on our side (bar being very wet underfoot in a few parks), some great hides and as usual great company. A big thanks to all the CO's for the placements.

Out with the junior cachers on this beautiful Sunday... tnlnsl tftc!

Nice spot. Ty.

Many hops and bush brushing aside and turns out it was as simple as I originally had thought and looked, I just didn't look at the right angle. Felt like this Macca's balloon was guiding me like the third crusader guarding The Holy Grail

Another find for the day

Found after searching on Good Friday (and Mum & Dad's 10th wedding anniversary) so there weren't too many people around. Parked in the carpark above, and went wandering. Soon found the cache.

Well, it was Good Friday and we had decided to give the I Hate Shopping series a go as there would be nobody down at Botany as the shops were all closed. Also, not to mention, it was the 10th our 10th wedding anniversary, and as we tend to do, we mark these events with collecting a few caches.

We got to Botany and had a look on the map to see where around the place the series was placed. Unfortunately, 60% of the caches have been temporarily disabled, so we headed for the remaining 40%. After having no luck with #2, we headed on over to #5, this one. It didn't take us long to figure out where the cache would be hidden given the hint. We had parked in the car car-park so we had to go for a wee walk in order to get to the cache, which suited us just nicely as the sun was shining after the previous few days of "stormy" weather.

We reached GZ and started to look around. After a bit of fossicking in the undergrowth, the cache was soon discovered. The log was signed for all involved and replaced before the caches was re-hidden.

Now we'll have to wait until Christmas Day or next Easter for a chance to have another go at this series without the prying eyes of the many muggles that frequent this place.

TFTC

Grabbed while walking past. TFTC

Be rude not to get tjis one whilst xmas shopping. Tftc

We decided to avoid shopping and have a look for one in this series instead however things were made difficult upon arrival at GZ when we found a council worker cutting bushes right where we needed to look.
We temporarily retreated and took the opportunity to have some lunch at the mall and returned 45 minutes later to find GZ was now clear. The cache was found after a short search. TFTC, glad to have another smiley in this series.

No luck again. This series is proving tricky

Poked around for a few minutes and then decided to check the hint. Found quickly in a place I thought I had looked already. TFTC

We have been up we have been down we have been all around. On our 4 day road trip from Hawkes Bay to Auckland and back collecting as many caches as we can. Signed log as b & p . Tftc. Happy caching

I thought of jumping down for this one, but realised I probably wouldn't be able to get back up again. So I toddler round, found all safe and we'll. TFTC

Yay ! I found another one of Keylev's series..!
So easy to drive around these carparks at midnight...
Would be pretty hard in day time !
Thankyou !

The old knees didn't like this one much. Gps led me straight to it so a quick find. TFTC

Trekked a tiny bit of flax because the compass took us slightly too far but found with SamJBird on a lovely quiet ANZAC morning.

Went with TheDrewJames who found this one. Cute log in there! My phone's GPS was fairly accurate on this one. TFTC.

Gotcha. All good here.

After finding ourselves childless this evening we decided to try and finish this series after having dinner and watching a movie. Grabbed a couple torches and off we went on a midnight adventure. Managed to find a few before deciding that #3 would be best found in daylight and an amorous couple was inconveniently parked directly in front of #4. Thankfully the area around #5 was all clear. TFTC!

Quick find tftc.

Good way to kill some time in Botany. No security around this time. TFTC!

Jax found it!! What's up with the security guard and his golf cart?

#10516. This one took us a while to locate (long enough for the security guy to come over in his golf trundler to see if we were up to no good. Troodles gave a pretty lame excuse (something about enjoying a visit when nobody was around) but he seemed happy we weren't going to cause any problems (he probably decided we were a couple of harmless weirdos). TFTC.

After Christmas brunch at sister-in-law's, we decided to head to nearby Botany Town Centre to look for a few caches while the area was deserted.
This took a wee while to track down as we assumed the terrain rating meant the cache was accessible from either the footpath or from the car park, but we assumed incorrectly and StreetWalker finally tracked it down. We were about to drive off when a security guy drove up and asked if we were OK (I was parked across two car parks as I didn't think there would be much competition for car parks today). He seemed satisfied with our answer and left. We wondered if we had been spotted looking suspicious on the surveillance cameras. TFTC.

I had fun looking for this one. Didn't have a pen to write in the logbook as I didn't expect to be out geocaching.

Quick find on a night out caching TFTC

After a number of previous unsuccessful attempts this was one cache that we really wanted to turn into a smiley. We noticed that the CO had replaced the cache and Mr HeMaLuDy was in the area with purply helping a friend introduce her youth members to geocaching, so Mrs HeMaLuDy suggested if it was not too late, that they have another look for this one on the way home. Well they finished around 10 pm and purply had to be up early for a cricket game in the morning, but they decided it was not too late so they headed back to GZ to find this, along with a couple of others that had helped the youth group too. Thankfully this time they made a quick find and we finally have our smiley.

Headed out to Botany this evening t find this cache with Mr HeMaLuDy, Mr Stik-a-crane and Mr NZTravellers, after they had helped me out with my youth group "introduction to geocaching" evening (I think we have some new converts lol). This one was on the hit list for Mr HeMaLuDy, as his team had previously DNF'd it (actually, so had I!!!). Took the high route and did a bit of bush bashing, jumping down from the carpark. Was a pretty quick find once at GZ. Log was duly signed, and then we to stand around in the bushes and talk about all sorts of random things (as you do), before heading off for refreshments.....
TFTC keylev!!! Glad to tick this one off my list!

We had been helping a fellow cacher educate a youth group the joys of geocahing around Howick, when we (the already hooked geocachers) found ourselves at a loose end... One of the group suggested we look for this cache as they had previously searched, but to no avail.... being a little addicted to the sport we were quite eager for another smiley, so off we raced to this GZ.
Once we had narrowed the likely hiding spot, it was the person whom had missed finding it previously who made the find tonight.
Goot time to find this one ... few mugglers.....

TFTC.

Tftc. Very nicely tucked away &out of prying eyes.

This entry was edited by stevecoxnz on Monday, 09 November 2015 at 07:26:10 UTC.

After a few DNF's it looks like the area has even cleaned up. Replacement cache left although I will try and put out another with better camo as I fear this may go again.

Happy caching!

3 of us searching high and low and no luck

No luck for us, had a good hunt around but nothing

Everything made sense - accept the absence of a cache!

We thought we had a very thorough search here, but had no luck, even after a call to the CO which confirmed we were in the right place. It has been found after we searched, so will have to return another day to search again.

We returned again a couple of days later after the successful find, but again no luck - hoping for third time lucky.

No find for us here today, gave it quite a search in what looked to be the right place.

Oh what?! I missed one!!! Just spotted it on my map. Probably would have DNFd it anyway...

Out n about with miss picking up a few out East

TFTC

Another great find on a geocaching holiday in the area.
Thanks for setting up this cache.

Nice to get this one found quickly today.
SL

I had a gap (like yesterday) to fill in the grid.....so an easy cache would be great. Went out of the car to go for a search. Noticed that I forgot my GPS so borrowed the phone of hubby. After a bit of a long search I came back in the car empty handed. Totally convinced that searching a cache with a phone is not my thing....
Hubby looked at the phone and laughed..."maybe it will help, if you turn the GPS on" Hmmm so I went for another look and yeah....now it was easy, Thanks.

Nice hide, found when I thought more about it, at the right level TFTC

After my work meetings were done for the day I had time to go and find a few caches. Once I got on the right level it was quickly found. TFTC, Biggles.

Out for a night of Geobowling decided to come a little early and get a few caches too. Sent the kids in for this one, got tired of waiting. Mum went in and laid hands on the cache straight away. TFTC.

My partner & I slipped into the bushes for a quickie - a quick cache find, that is. Came out with a smilie!

Quickly slipped into the bushes, signed the log and out again.

TFTC

Found it! Nice quick find

Nice quick find

Fairly quick find while out for a walk. TFTC

No luck with this one- was worried that people were wondering what I was doing skulking around as a lot of traffic around... Two and a half kiwis found it today though so I know it's there!!!

Nice quick find. TFTC

Dropped TB
TFTC