Gnome 0ne knows where it is (Central Plateau) Maunganamu, North Island, New Zealand
By CHLYBN on 17-Apr-17. Waypoint GC742XR

Not sure I want to replace with the same style cache container.
Local Rock hunters are also very inquisitive so best I leave this area to them.

It appears someone needed a cool ammo box and has uplifted this one....... hmmmm.

A pile of branches at GZ. I think it's been muggled.

No luck today
See photo for proof

Have been for 2 days in Taupo.
After a short walk we found quickly this box.

Tftc and greetings from Germany.

Nice little hike. Walked from our B & B. Great park & flowers. tftc Greetings from Canada

I managed to pick up a screw in my tire, so it was down by about half this morning. It was just a slow leak, so I put in some are and was able to drive all the way back to Auckland before getting it fixed properly.

I had a bit of time so I stopped and got this cache in the Botanic Reserve. TFTC.

======== NZ Mega 2020 ========

Be sure to join the Facebook page: NZ Mega 2020.

Planning for the NZ Mega 2020 event is well underway. It will be held in Auckland over Labour Weekend, 23 to 26 October 2020. It's going to be a massive celebration of geocaching:

20 years of geocaching worldwide.
20 years since New Zealand had the very first geocache hidden outside of USA.
And it's 2020 - all the 20s!

Talk to your geo-friends and start planning to be part of this event - you won't want to miss it!

Found thank u been a long time but back in the game

What an amazing botanical reserve. We wouldn't have come here without geocaching.
Thanks for showing us this beautiful place.
TFTC & best regards
4Hippies

Wow, I had no idea this existed in Taupo. What a beautiful place to explore! Will have to return, now I know about it. Great container. I only noticed 1 logbook ( but admittly was in a bit of a rush) and drat! Forgot to bring my signature stamp.... So simply signed the log. TFTC!! Deserves a favourite point. Sadly I have not been caching much so am lacking any. Must amend!

Didn’t even know this botanical gardens was here. Happy to find a trail to wander to the can, sign the log and grab a TB.

No searching for this one as it was out in the open. Returned to where we thought it should have been.
Wonderful short walk around these beautiful gardens

Short trip away with woolwood9.
Quick walk for the cache in very good location.
*Thanks for the fun find* SL

Found good cache just in the open away from hint area, lid part open, but T/B's and contents all seem ok. Returned to cover at proper spot.

Returned to this cache as was struggling to find a cache big enough to house trackables. Have dropped two here today.

On my way to Rotorua for ten pin bowling tournament, grabbing some caches on the way. Good walk around this park before the rain. Thanks CHLYBN for the cache.

I am logging using the Cachly app Ctemplate so please excuse generic logging along the way. It’s just my way of keeping track, but I do genuinely thank each and every one of you cache owners for taking the time and energy to place these caches. Many Thanks for bringing me here. We are on holiday for the weekend from Tauranga, Great Hide here, Cheers Took TB. Will Log when home. All good here at this fabulous spot.

We needed to get Albert the geohound walked so we parked up in the park a decent way away from the cache and took the opportunity to walk through what is really a very lovely park - amazing that is maintained by volunteers (as I take it, not certain about that). After a short but very pleasant walk to the final the cache was quickly spotted - always nice to find one of these traditional looking caches of a decent size.

Had our letterboxing stamp with us for this trip so left Albert's stamp and signed in - all good here, thanks for the cache. Thanks for the cache - do like a good letterbox hybrid.

Omg. My favorite GC in taupo! Definitely giving this location a fav point ️. If you pick the right parking lot, the walk to the GC is spectacular and less than 10 mins of natural bush and the sounds of bell birds and tui’s singing to you along the way
THANK YOU!!

(I apologise for the late log but the date is accurate)
Found today with the help of TwigNZ while we were up in Waitomo for a holiday of sorts. I had a great time doing this cache and thanks for placing it. All was fine with this cache. TFTC

School holidays, plus the combination of public holidays and 3 days leave means I get to take my lad on a road trip. This time we have chosen Waitomo to be our destination, and today was the drive up to visit friends in Cambridge before moving on to Waitomo tomorrow.

I had hoped for better weather for our trip in order to do a few stops along the route for geocaching, but the rain gods had other plans. We were able to find a couple of breaks in the downpours, and therefore finds a few caches that I had earmarked.

This was one of those, and we made the most of the brief rain respite to wander down to GZ from parking about 200m away. Once there, a brief search turned up the good sized cache container, and I was able to log both my son and I in before a hurried walk back to the car as the rain started down on us again.

All was fine with this cache and it's contents, so thanks for placing it.

Starting to find myself running all over nz looking for mailboxes

Been here a few times over the years. Always a nice place to come. Didn't take long to find. Love these caches. Rather empty so put in some bits and pieces I carry round with me. Tftc

Lovely walk in the gardens. Made a reasonably quick find given the tree cover.
SL TFTC

We set out on this glorious late summer day on a few days holiday - heading first for Taupo and then onto Napier and back home. We hope to fit in a leisurely amount of geocaching, and as we’ll stay with muggle family some of the time we’ll be focused on them rather than caching.
When we reached Taupo we settled in at our motel and then set out to collect a few caches, this being the first. We found the Reserve all right, but weren’t sure where to go in it, so just followed the one way ring road. We stopped and began our search at the Camellia Walk as the GPS was pointing us that way. Eventually we realised that was not bringing us to the cache, so returned to the car and re-read the cache description more carefully this time! Then we saw which walk we needed to take and all was straightforward after that. We TNLN at the cache, just signed the log.
We enjoyed the drive through and walks in this lovely Reserve, and even got close to a beautiful kereru drinking from a small pool as we returned to the car. Thanks for bringing us here. Gets a FP from us.

Found it post Ironman cool down stumble.

Heute stand zusammen mit Heckenstürmer ein etwas gemütlicher Tag auf dem Programm. Wir waren in der Gegend um Taupo unterwegs, sind durch die Stadt geschlendert und haben uns die Craters of the Moon und die Huka Falls angeschaut.

Greets from Switzerland

Day 20 in Newzealand. Today we visited Taupo, the Huka Falls and The Craters of the Moon.
A very beautiful Country with lovely places. We were able to find nice Caches and See Lots of beautiful places.
Thank you for showing us this place.
Tftc

Meanwhile this is my third geocaching-trip to Middle-Earth . And I love it! [:X]
But still there are routes and places in this beautiful country that are on the 'discover-me' list and want to be visited and explored.
Day #11:
The red rental-cache-car took me on a very long northbound journey from Palmerston North to Mount Wellington near Auckland .
The weather was quite pleasant, except in the Ruhapehu-Region [xx(] - just like during the previous visits [;))...
Along the scenic route there were some great geo-treasures [^] worth a stop. Just like this one:
So glad to find another letterbox in Middle-Earth! A really cool cache - AMO-boxed! I like this kind of old-fashioned container .
Thanks to the owner [:X] for placing and maintaining this cache and cheers from Germany!

Made a pleasant walk on a lovely summers day to this one - a nice big container to

TFTC

Our trip today took us from Taupo to Napier. We picked up a few caches on the way.
Here we parked up but with no clue as to where the millennium walk was we just followed paths and our GPSr and eventually got to GZ. Cache found quickly. We took a different route out and spotted a sign for the he walk and realised we could have parked so much closer.
Crickets entertained us on the way though
TFTC
Tim and Viv - ddm

Cool box! Beautiful spot

A visit to the Botanic Gardens and a GC find. Perfect way to spend a late afternoon when it is not quite so hot walking. TFTC

First thing in the morning we went to the botanical garden and found this Letterbox. Beautiful area.
TFTC and greetings from Denmark

Yebo CHLYBN

Out on a tiki tour with muggle friends towards Taupo the waitomo caves and many other sights of this beautiful country, those muggle friends didn’t mind at all to stop here and there to look for a cache or two

Well found and merry christmas

Tftc

A little adventure to return Gnome1. A very lovely spot and a nice cache.

What a great idea and don't forget to see who's watching because #Gnome1Knows

Superb day for a walk around the gardens, we chose to park at the entrance and walk until we found a starting point for the Millenium Walk track. Once in the right space beyond the real garden area, the letterbox was soon found in the scrappy undergrowth. TFTC.

Our first LBH in NZ. Cache was exposed and unlatched but in good order. We signed, drew the stamps we don't have and concealed a bit better. Thanks CHLYBN.

This place smells so much better than parts of Rotorua where we've been lately!
Thanks for bringing us here today, cache found, stamped and signed easily.

Always on the lookout for something other than traditional caches and pleased to see a letterbox here. Since the route to GZ is not on the maps, I had to take a guess and got it wrong at first but as I was driving away, I noticed another path and this led to the cache. A quick find for a decent sized box. TFTC.

A Long journey on our way to the WENZ2018 mega event, travelling down the west cost of the North Island, time in and around Wellington and back north via Taupo, lots of great places seen, lots of caches visited. Many thanks to all the CO's that made finding these caches possible.

Great Letter box nice walk
Last one for our weekend away
Beauiful flowers

Great walk nice Letter Box

Great flowers this time of year. all in full colour

On a long trip down to the mega with Lis's crew. So for me it good for numbers and favorites caches. With several stops and a lot of caches and several souvenirs up for grabs the trip was the perfect opportunity to get my numbers up and get some challenges that I have qualified for.

I was on a 10 day trip to the Mega in Wellington with thegreatauk. I wanted a line of smiles along my route as well as solved puzzles and different cache types. I'm always pleased to collect another CHLYBN cache too. We had a lovely drive through the beautiful gardens on our way to the closest parking area. A short walk and we were there. A quick find and we were off again, TFTC

Just a quick log to keep finds, TB visits and / or drop offs in order. Full log to follow once back from Wellington Mega.

TB drop

Read the cache page so that you are on the right track! we stopped early, and ended up walking around the Camelia gardens, which are just lovely.

A short drive, and we parked at the track entrance, and off we went following the GPS. Like the others we turned off to early, and a geo trail into the wilderness has been created. After a back track to the metal track, we followed around the bend, to the intersection and turned left - and there was the cache.

All is good with the cache. Thanks CHYBN for the hide, and bringing us here, a very special place in Taupo. Well worth the detour

Our four days in Taupo with the grandkids has come to an end.
Everyone really enjoyed themselves.
The good thing about departing is that I get to finally do some caching while Ms M heads South with the grandkids.

I think I've been to this reserve once before. A nice drive, particularly with the Rhododendrons in full flower. I found a spot to park and made a short walk followed by a quick find.
TFTC

Stopped by the botanical gardens on our way back from rotorua. Easy find at gz and nice to have such a big container. Tftc. Took tb.

Easy find on beautiful gardens.

I was surprised by how long and windy the road through this reserve is.
Found the cache after a short walk. It wasn't too hard to find, using the hint.
Nice spot.
Thanks.

Spending the night in Taupo and had time to come up here for a walk in these beautiful gardens. Cache all good. TFTC

Went for a walk in the beautiful gardens, loads of tuis and fantails!! Dropped a trackable here too. Tftc

I have stayed a night in Taupo at my usual place Berkenhoff backpackers, cheap place to stay, no frills, but warm and cosy and central. Today I carry on my mission of looking for caches that fulfill the ‘400 Challenge’ and the ‘Jasmer challenge’ as well.

My second cache for the morning, and I was prepared for a little walk but I parked pretty close actually and spent no more than 10 mins or less to get to GZ. No worries finding the big bugger! Then it was just a matter of signing in and I was off around lake Taupo, cheers for the cache.

Log later

On our way home from a night at Mount Maunganui and we thought this would be a nice opportunity for a bit of a stretch of the legs.
It was a lovely, muggle free stroll to GZ and a straight forward find. Thanks CHLYBN
We left a pet rock - a bear cub

On our way home this was 1 of 2 that were on my list to do. Didn't have my stamp but signed the logbook nice sized hide and being early no niggles around thanks for the placement.

Love finding ammo cans. Picked up the TB. TFTLB

Passing through Taupo time for a quick break and a cache. Nice quick find here today thanks CHLBYN took TB

A run along the path and a quick find

The Waipahihi Botanical Reserve is a place that we have visited on many occasions, both while on holiday in Taupo or when passing through. We stopped here again today to eat our lunch and to find this cache. Not sure if we have walked this particular track before, but we soon managed to find our way to GZ. Thanks for another cache type in Taupo.

On our travel in NZ we always look for rare cache types like this. Before we went to the free thermal pools we stopped in the Botanical Gardens to pick up this letterbox. After a nice little walk in the bush we found the nice container quickly.
Thanks for showing! Tftc

Coin in
TB out

Found. Lucky we no our trees. Thanks guys.

Second visit, cache still there. We placed a TB.

Weekend in Taupo with jgirl1880. First time in these gardens, so pretty!

I am on my way back home to Palmerston North after a few days in Matamata. I wasn't going to do any caching in Taupo, concentrating on the roads instead, but this is a letterbox!

What a pretty little stroll through the native bush - which, incidentally, I think is a bit odd for a botanical garden. But it does get a favourite from me. And a path tag.

Still chasing after the planets, doing my part for the Planetary Pursuit promotion. of the 500 points I need to reach Pluto, I now have over 2000. Where does that put me? The Oort Cloud?

Back in the UK there is a challenge cache which requires you to find 7 cache types in 7 countries. As we were passing we made a short detour to pick up this cache a we had not yet found a letterbox in NZ. At first we approached from the wrong direction and it looked the gz might have been cleared. However we backtracked and found a much more sensible route and soon had the cache in hand. Tftc.

A detour to find a letterbox, and it took us to a lovely botanic garden. TFTC!

heading north to Rotorua for re union and persuaded hubby he needed a little stretch after sitting in car for last 3 hours and the gardens provided a beautiful place to stop I followed the gos and looked for a a titoki and there it was Thanks

Staying in Taupo for the night and this was the last of three caches found in a wee tour of the area before tea. We enjoyed the drive through the Botanical Gardens and the couple of walks we did. This one was successful, although we also first overran the cache before the GPS corrected and sent us back.
Thanks for the extra excuse to visit the Gardens.

Found it. Nice and easy.

Miss 9 and I had a little trouble locating GZ as the gps didnt settle very well initially so there were a few 'nope not there' moments. The gps settled a little and pointed us back along the path but we couldn't see the hint object until Miss 9 pointed to a likely location and sure enough.

We were surprised how close the cache was to the path but its hidden enough that you can easily walk right past it as we did.

Thanks for the cache.

We took a walk along the track in the rain to look for this cache. Actually we went a bit too far and checked out a couple of other features before we found it as we headed back. The geocaching log book was the one we signed before replacing all as it had been found. Many thanks got to CHYLBN for setting up this cache in a beautiful botanical garden area.

Commuting from Hamilton to Napier for work in Whakatu this week, decided to find a cache. After deciding that Taupo was way too busy ( it was nice and dead later Monday morning at 6am...) I came up here. I can't believe there's more people out here. Having cleaned out most of Taupo and the gardens last geocaching trip here, this had popped up since so it was a great excuse to come up again. This place is so pretty! Cheers.

After some hours of driving StefTheVet, BabyLeoNZ and me wanted to go for a nice long walk and the botanical garden in Taupo was just the best choice! We walked all ways, small and wider, stopped for looking at trees and plants, listened to birds and enjoyed it very much. We easily found the cache well hidden and in good condition with exact coords. Thanks for showing us this amazing location and TFTC! It's worth a fav point!

9.20am - Co Ords good. Spotted cache sticking out of its hide. Replaced as found. SLTFTC

With Gap (of Fap and Gap), and nerweed...

Our second early morning find... We followed the path and our iPhone gps right down the gentle slope. The coordinates were very good, and we arrived in a quiet, secluded arm of the bush. We scouted around for what should have been an obvious hint. Luckily, we spotted the cache sticking out from its hide. We did the business and re-hid the container as we found it. TFTC.

found today, greet little eventure i had trying to find this gc, i think i went the very long way

thanks CHLYBN for the GC

** This is a log from an account split. Logged as YetiNZ **

Run out of loves for the day otherwise it would get one Beautiful location to visit on our way home to Wellington. Our first letterbox! TFTC

A nice quick find after a wee walk. Cheers.

And now we travel from Taupo to New Years Eve celebrations in Napier. There have been a few new caches since we were last through this way.

Thanks to all of the COs for placing and maintaining their caches. Cheers.

We had a nice walk around the gardens today after we had to abort previous attempt on boxing day due to rain. The kids loved finding and rehiding loads of painted rocks! This geocache was a nice find on the way out. Tftc!

I was heading to Turangi for a couple of days R&R and stopped to grab this one, it is a shame the rest in the park are no longer looked after, but found this the long way after not reading the description and finding a converluted way to the cache site. But it was a quick easy find once at GZ. TFTC

Mplc, Nice walk un the forest.

I'm from Norway, escaping the cold winter and travelling around New Zealand for 7 weeks, using geocaching as my tourguide. Today I spent the day in Taupo. I feel like I did quite a lot in one day, I saw the Huka Falls, the opening of the Aratiatia Dam, I enjoyed lunch at the lake, I climbed up Mount Tauhara and I finished off with a drive in the Botanical Reserve to find the letterbox there. Lots of beautiful scenery.

About this cache:
Nice and big letterbox. I tought I had to walk far to get to this cache, but was happily surprised I could drive around in this reserve, so it was just a short walk. Quick find. Tftc

#9697. A good short walk in Taupo. GZ was all quiet when we visited. Quick find. Good hide. The cache was in excellent condition, all nice and dry inside. However, there was only one log book – while the stamp was there, the letterboxing log book was nowhere to be found.

Took Dr. Quackers
Dropped off Rhein-Nahe Geocoin 2007
Signed log.

Thanks for the placement and for bringing us to the 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.

*****
Did you know that planning has started for a major Event in Wellington in 2018? Check out the details on the [GC78NMQ WENZ Event 2018 (Wellington)](https://coord.info/GC78NMQ) cache listing, [WENZ2018 website](https://sites.google.com/site/wenzgeo2018/home) or visit the event's page on [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/groups/590545297801072/). If you plan to come, please remember to log a “Will Attend” on the [Event Log](https://www.geocaching.com/play/geocache/gc78nmq/log).
*****

Nice walk. Lovely place. Tftc!

Lovely, thanks for hiding

ReCached and I drove to the botanical garden just to find the final of multi-cache we had solved earlier today. Once we were already there, we decided to go for the letterbox, too. Quick find. TFTC CHLYBN!

December 13, 2017 @ 14:07
Cache #1948

Cunning stunts sussed it

Went for a walk in the Botanicals tonight to drop of two trackables. One has spent the last 2 weeks in the South Island visiting caches with me and the other one I picked up on the Kepler Track.

lovely walk to this one. number 10 cache found. yeah..!

I found this cache along with a small group of secondary school students (SJCgeocamp) who were finding Geocaches as part of their camp week. They visited Huka falls, Taupo, Napier, Hastings and Te Mata Peak over four days. We went swimming hiking, and biking and found a wide range of geocaches ranging from traditionals, puzzles, Earthcaches, gadget caches, and the boys favorites-night caches. My hope is that because of their experience they decide to continue Geocaching as a hobby in the future. Thank you to all the CO’s who placed and maintained all the geocaches we found and for bringing us to so many interesting spots.

Nice quality cache in an interesting spot. Some how we managed to lose three boys here for about 10-15 minutes, it was a good learning experience for them and we didn't have them running off trying to be the first in the group to find the hide for the rest of the trip as we had been experiencing up until then.

Awesome geocache 10/10

After yet another disappointing DNF in these gardens, this cache made the walk worth it. Thanks!

Down in Taupo for the Around Lake Bike ride in support of my father whom was competing for the seventh time (age 74) so this gave me a little time to go for a wander around the place.

this was the first of the day and as part of a 4 hour walk and 28km I covered. Managed to get back in time to see Dad cross the finishline in a smige under 6hours so all in all it wasn't a bad day with sunshine and enough cloud cover to make it all bearable.

thanks for the placement, thanks for the cache

Found with my daughter while out Taupo Rock hunting today.

We have been here before in our old motor home so we knew we could drive through ok and good parking. Nice wander through looking at azelas, rhododendrons and camelias. Lovely walk. Thanks for bringing us here