Otawa Series #2 Kereru (Bay of Plenty) Papamoa, North Island, New Zealand
By HambrookHunters on 24-Aug-15. Waypoint GC6262E

Thanks for next kesh, the Birds Are singing, So awesome be here.

Operation Otawa. Find #2 Log wet. Unable to scribe name. Great walk so far. TFTC

I had a day off work today - a so called well being day - so took the opportunity to walk to the Otawa Trig and find some caches along the way.

This was the second cache of the day and an easy find. TFTC

Got the afternoon of work and as the suns out and it’s meant to be raining the rest of the week, I headed up to this series. Wasn’t sure how far I would get but managed five out of the first six plus the bonus. Was a great would out that took just over 3 hours. This was a much quicker find with a clear hint. Turned out the caches are close to the track unless otherwise specified. Log all fine and numbers collected. On to No 3. Thanks for the exercise and smileys.

Otawa Series #2 Kereru (Bay of Plenty) was transferred from HambrookHunters to user kimbathelion

This one took a little bit to find as it was well covered in leafs etc. thanks for placement

Nice easy find. Tftc!

Submitted via Garmin Live Geocaching. A great walk thanks. Next week I will do the total distance.

Found pretty easily. A good bush walk.

This one wasn't too hard to find, beautiful trees. Tftc

We were on a practice hike for a bigger long tramp later in the month and came up here just to reach the trig. A lovely walk through the bush and caches as a bonus! Tftc

We needed to get a few km under the belt before a trip we have planned next month, so off we go with our packs fully loaded with over night gear, feeling a bit over prepared. This series has always been on the todo list and now we have an excuse.

Another speedy find, with a friendly fantail along to help out

#11,549
With this cache trail potentially getting archived a quick plan was hatched to kill 2 birds with 1 stone , I needed to go for my daily run and needed to find this trail of caches.(no actual birds were killed )
Checked out the map and decided on starting at Manoeka Rd end to maximise elevation gain for my mountain running training.
Glad for an easy one after struggling with #3, almost done!

Heading on up. TFTC

We had parked our car at the end of the trail and got a ride to the start of the trail. This was our second cache along the trail. Cache was quickly located thanks to the detailed hint.

A plan was hatched to tackle the mighty Otawa track today. DC and I left his van at the Otawa Lodge carpark and headed up to the top carpark on the Quarry Rd.

We were getting on into a good pace and expecting to catch up to Jan anytime from here, but we weren't sure how far ahead she was.
Another quick find thanks to good coordinates and hint.
Thanks for bringing me here.
TFTC.


*Found with [Geooh Live](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobiltal.geoohLive)*

The message came through last night asking who wants to do this series. I was keen as I didn’t want to have to walk this track on my own and have been avoiding doing so. I have also written this template on Cachly to log as I go. On this mission today with TNXPRO and Davidson Clan. A lovely sunny morning after a day of rain. Many Thanks for this series and for eventually bringing me here. Cheers

On this mission today with TNXPRO and McJandals. A lovely sunny morning after a day of rain. Many Thanks for this series and for eventually bringing me here. Cheers

Was out with Btparty, ABBA1026 and GHopa for a pre-festive walk. Great times.
#2 was very straightforward to find. Don't forget to collect the coordinates

This was a while in the planning, and the day finally arrived when four of us (GHopa, Abba1026, SuMars41 & Tparty) took to the hills for the 10 km walk around the Otawa Reserve. The weather had turned for the better today, and it was a pleasant stroll around the track. We were in no hurry, and took the time to enjoy the scenery. A car had been parked at the Manoeka Road end, and thanks to a friendly muggle, we got dropped off at the Te Puke Quarry end. This was a good move in hindsight, as it eliminated a fair bit of steep climbing had we gone the other way. We were unable to find #1, even though we knew it had been moved. It's hiding place eluded us, but it will not be a hardship to return to this one at a later date. We were also unable to find #5. Recent logs suggested that GZ had changed a little since the original placement. Despite armed with this knowledge, and a fair bit of time spent searching, we were still unable to turn it up. We will return sometime in the future. We made sure that the bonus numbers were collected along the way, but we walked past it in the end, and decided not to go back to retrieve it. This can wait for a later time when we return to pick up the remainder of the series. Many thanks to HambrookHunters for making the effort to lay out the trail. It's a great challenge and well worth the effort. We had little difficulty finding the containers using the hints provided. A couple of logbooks are damp but still able to be used. A very enjoyable walk with a great group of friends. TFTC

We forgot to bring details of these Otawa caches when we were staying at the Mount at the end of March, so having a free day today we came back to get those at this end of the track. Buckets of rain as we drove down from Auckland but we enjoyed a fine day down here. Great planning to have these caches spread along the track, made a grand walk for us. Thanks HambrookHunters.

A chance to get out and about before the festive stupidities start (with the Otawa Track as the main objective for the day as we have been looking at for a long time), but of course a few other caches are always going to get caught into the action. So in the company of HKCB & Kyb3r we set off in two cars (parking at each end) and beginning the walk from the northern end and heading south.

Started walking at 5.33am, Distance 12km. Total Time 3hrs17min, Moving Time 2hrs33min. Conditions great and nice and cool throughout the walk.
Started out very nice through the long grass of a farm walk, which was followed by a nice gentle bush walk that for the most part was easy to moderate in intensity (at least that's what the smartwatch tells me). Most finds were located quickly (with good use of the hints) and all in all we were glad we walked the direction that we did.
There was plenty of laughter and good nature'd ribbing about many different topics and a thoroughly enjoyable time to be had by us all.
Thanks for putting this in place and getting us out and about, it was brilliant.
Our thanks goes out to the CO for the effort in getting these out here.

Thanks for the placement, Thanks for the cache

As usual this series is another one of those series you've been wanting to get since it was first published. However this one proved to have another challenge thrown into the mix as it involved either there and back walk or a vehicle at two ends! Hence as I wasn't yet prepared to do a there and back walk this series was put on the back burner.

However a few hours this morning managed to make itself free and we quickly filled it with this series. It had finally got the best of me so teamed up with Cats&Dragons and Kyb3r and headed over from Hamilton in two cars. As I needed to be back in Hamilton by 10.30am, a early start meant we had positioned cars at both ends and had started walking a bit after 5.30am.

With the time against us there was no room to stop and smell the flowers, so it was head down and get the heart rate up. And it paid off as we completed the track with all caches found, plus an extra unpublished one at the end of the track in 3 1/4 hours, which included a 20min hunt for one cache. The rest were found without much hassle, and the bonus cache was well made.

Thanks for the series!

On the cards today was walking the the Otawa Trig track. No Kereru's at the cache, but Tui's in the trees above. Nice easy find, cache all good, thanks

Got east and west mixed up and initially was looking in the wrong place but soon sorted. Finally got the last code for the bonus. CITOed a Ribena bottle. TFTC.

Greeting from Germany!
TFTC

Nice.
TFTC chrissli-bär

Quick easy find here great walk TFTC

A nice quick and easy find. Great walking track TFTC

Easy find, Lovely walk.

Georunnermatt found this one. Just like the last one! Good job hihi. Tftc!

Another easy find on a beautiful walk. Thanks for bringing us here

A quick find by Matt while Kyra and I were looking in the wrong spot. A pattern is emerging

Looked on wrong side of track to start with but an obvious hiding place soon revealed the spot. Thanks for bringing us here

Yes found it in good condition ..co ords good but not hidden on sw side more like East...its awsome in the bush today great walk and lots of bird life and song thanks for a great cache

I tried to con a couple of other cachers to come with me today but got no takers. It was a beautiful morning so what better way to spend it but on a walk through some beautiful native bush. Had a nice talk with the farmers on the track to the bush. I love caches that are put where they are easily found especially when placed in bush. That way the young plants are given a chance to live.

No kererus around at this time.

Cheers for the cache.

We totally enjoyed the Otawa series!
We started with series #6 and walk back down to the "Gate way"finding Otawa series in a backwards order, as we started tramping into the Otawa track from Otanewainuku (Oropi) end.
**If you like tramping and want to meet onto Otawa track by start at Otanewainuku, plan for someone to drop you off and pick you up at each end. This track is a steep climb, track is over growing in areas and orange markers are few and far between! Research the area and tracks before you start this tramp. Go well prepared and start early as it is a long day and a hard walk!**

Otawa Track is a lovely walk, tracks are great and has beautiful stops to veiw from and rest at.
The Otawa series is really great!
We've being to trig from Quarry Road before which is a great walk, tracks are great, but didn't know about Geocaching then. So these Caches made this tramping expedition more exciting.

Today's first Cache find was Series #6, as from here this is where our tracks met from Otanewainuku.
Plan being is to find Otawa series in a backwards order #6 - Gate way, collect the bonus co-ords and come back again at later date and start from Manaweka Road to collect the #9-7 (from memory) and find the bonus cache as well.

Found #2, this tricked us a bit, not sure if the GZ is on the SW side we thought it more to be the SE side, but we could be wrong! But once found noticed it was a bit obvious to the eyes!
These Otawa series has really made our day exciting, it was a long tramping day for us, as we walked in from a totally different starting point, but finding these series was a great rest time for us and kept us moving and motivated to find the the next "Geo" as we call them!

Easy find thanks to the clue. The previous finder had written in the log book " 2/12/15 Andrew Mudge accidental find......... out hunting." I replaced it with a little bit of leaf cover to prevent it being so easily discovered by muggles. I could hear a Kereru flying around the whole time I was near this cache. Very appropriate name HambrookHunters TFTC

Nice walk. No kereru spotted but plenty of bird life. Got overtaken by mountain bikers. Considered going on to #3 but decided against it. Spotted a hunter and realised my khaki clothing was not a great idea.

Good walk with kiwi corral team! Good weather. TFTC

NZ Biscuit had some friends who wanted to do a tramp so we thought we could finish this series. The only trouble is that it is raining quite steady. Got to the carpark and decided to go for it and once we were in the bush it was a bit better. Didn't take too long to get to the cache and lucky it is sheltered by this beautiful tree. We carried on to the trig but turned about a km from it as the weather was steadily getting worse. The track on this side is definitely easier and even with all the rain we still heard some birds TFTC

Went off in the pouring rain with NZ Flossy to collect the last in the series. It was a bit unnerving to drive back to my place with NZFlossy so wet that she drove wearing a dry top and her knickers. It was her car after all. I was just praying we did not have an accident on the way. Made cache more memorable though. Think walking in from this side is easier than the other end.

Staying at the Mount for the weekend, and thinking of exploring the bush this time instead of the beach. Good idea too because a very strong Norwesterly would make the coast very unpleasant. The walk between cache 1 and 2 is very pleasant, the bush is quite open in spite of the supplejack. Sveppi and I both guessed where this hide would be and a glance at the GPS poved we were staring at the right tree! Just noticed we forgot to write the numbers down for the bonus cache while visiting cache No1... Oh well, just keep walking and see how things pan out.

On and upwards on this windy day. This is a great area and lucky for us the bush is sheltering us from the wind today. Finding this one we realized we forgot to write down the clue for the bonus from the first cache (oops!) ...will see what happens. TFTC

Received notification of new caches at Te Puke and got a text from Squirrel Nutcase asking if I was interested in going for these. As we needed caches for published on day for our challenge my answer was yes without looking to see where they were. Next message was that the Tauranga guys were also going for them tonight so a bit more pressure to go so I suggested that they start at one end and us at the other end and do a vehicle key swap when we meet up on the track. Great idea so off to pick up the Squirrel. By the time we got to the start it was 8.30pm and not to worried about the distance to the end.
Walked up through farmland and at first missed gate into the bush. Quick discussion and we were onto the track. By this time received text from team at other end who were struggling with finds with only finding one cache at this stage.
Good walking track up and steadily finding caches as we went with more texts from other end of track, almost to #4 when we met the other team, buggar me its Philip and his 10 year old son which I got the impression they were glad to see us. I felt it was a brave effort on their part ( we just get called mad, crazy etc etc which is mostly from Mrs Fap) anyway a bit of a pick me up talk we swapped keys and parted. Apart from a bit of a search for bonus cache all others were found fairly quickly with hint and Co Ords except #9 as our phones had gone flat about half an hour before so will be back to get this one but maybe in daylight. We finally arrived home at 4am Friday, lucky for Squirrel he is on school holidays but me it's a another work day.

9.25pm - (FTF) with Squirrel - Lots of large trees but Co Ords were good. SLTFTC

{FTF} On the hunt with Gap (of Fap and Gap).

Day 38 of a hopeful 50-day caching streak...

The notifications for the Otawa series began to pour in just before 6:30PM. Shortly after, Gap phoned to gauge my interest... How badly do we need these caches for our geocaching license? (Challenge: find 20 caches on the day of publishing)... Naturally, I was keen to go, but wanted to see who else might be in the area tonight. A few texts revealed that Philip Perry and son were coming in from the lodge end. We arranged to do a car key swap along the walk...

We were quite impressed with the path in its early stages... Due to the overwhelming darkness, the walk was quite uneventful, though we did catch fleeting glimpses of the lights of the coastal towns below. After a fairly lengthy hike, we arrived at the hint object. A short rummage, and this one was in hand. TFTC.

When we arrived at the rough gz there were a couple of spots to choose from - then my GPS jumped so we went to a new gz where the hint was obvious - and a good hint left from the previous finders - cheers guys. Visit my Otawa #9 Tui GC64MCP link for the full experience

This entry was edited by Philip.Perry on Sunday, 11 October 2015 at 03:15:43 UTC.

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