Ponga? What Ponga? (Auckland) Auckland, North Island, New Zealand
By GeoRick on 23-Jan-18. Waypoint GC7HF21

Up in Auckland for the nightGreat wee hide not been here beforethanks

Great wee hide still nice and dry thanks

Nice walkway to get down here. Never been this way before. Nice views coming down here. Nice camouflage. TFTC

Sneaky

Seeing I don't work Fridays and ANZAC was a Thursday this year it was a good opportunity to get away and go geocaching over the extra long weekend. My Auckland Grandies had been sick so no visits to them this time but I did have dinners with my other Auckland son. I do love Devonport. With quite a few green dots out this way and no ftf needed for my dot day calendar I was excited to spend the day out here. I'm slowly making my way back towards town. The Bayswayer Park was very busy with soccer today. I managed to find a park and walk to the two caches in this area. I had to wait for a muggle to get out of sight before ducking off the path to find this. The cache had fallen out of its neat covering so I replaced it properly when I'd finished. Thanks for the neat cache container

Well, I had no clue, what ponga means before I used google. Thanks for this cache!

Nice little hide - thank you

A busy little path here! As we were standing around "admiring nature," I spotted something out of the corner of my eye, and as soon as the muggles had passed by, my suspicions were confirmed! Cool find, TFTC!

Finally spotted it after 5 or more visits. Nice title helped and also the right angle off the path. No pen today sorry. TFTC!#1045

Caching with Gh0stChips29. Really great!

Cool cache the name helps

I looked for this one with GeohoundandI last summer. It was the end of a long day caching and we had no luck (obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be here again tonight). We looked on both side of the path but saw no signs of a ponga.This evening came down with Daddypig and the geohound. When the gps got down to 1m I spotted something, the geohound spotted a little white dog, and Daddypig couldn't even find the cache on his phone. After waiting for everybody to disappear I ducked down and picked up the cache. It turns out last time we looked from the wrong angle.

**#19,368**Mrs Geckoh was having better luck with GeoRick caches than Mr Geckoh, her first find for the day.

Found it

Thanks
Our first find ever

Took a while but finally found it

I searched with the eyes and saw something. YEAH!
TFTC and greetings from Germany.
Klatho & Gazzelli

Wanting to start the year off right I headed out with Keylev for a night raid on the North Shore.

After work we jumped in our car and headed over to the area with the intention of driving around a circuit and clearing as many as we could.

A quick easy find even while still talking on the phone!

TFTC

Out on a caching night out with NZ Travellers as both mini-cachers are away at camp .

Didn't fool us today...phew!

Thanks for the cache.

Great camo! TFTC

No luck today.

We are caching around Bayswater and Devonport on this windy, and occasionally wet, afternoon. We walked on from Bayswater Bridge to look for What? Checked both sides of the path before one of us spotted something that made a lot of sense. The cache was found soon after. Thanks.

Easy if tou know what a ponga looks like x

Back again to find this and again no luck

We spent farrr toooo long looking on the side that my gps suggested. Once I phoned a friend and crossed the other side we finally had a win here. Being a bison, I wrongly thought I would need to look up. Lots of muggles but plenty of gaps in between them too. Thanks for the challenge!

Great hide and great camo. Fun finds with lil miss while out getting our steps in. TFTC

Quick find once you use the gps and the hint. Log book is full

No luck for me here, checked a few places both sides of the path but nothing found that would pass as a cache. Another time maybe

This took multiple visits to find and the title definately lives up to its name. In the end I trusted the coordinates and in between the foot traffic I got my hands on the well constructed cache. TFTC

I've been looking for this for a while and this is attempt #2 but still can't find it. Third time lucky I hope...

No joy

Spotted and solved. Good camo. Nearly fooled me. Tftc

Found after a few minutes searching, TFTC!

Got

Lovely walkway for a summer evening

Way back in February Isis58, no.13 and I planned a trip to Auckland for the planned Mega event. When Covid struck and the country went into lockdown we decided to wait and see what happened - - that was less hassle than trying to get refunds on our flights anyway. Well, of course the Mega event was cancelled but luckily for us, flying was an option again by Labour Weekend. We changed some of the details of our trip but decided we would fit in as much caching as we could. We were joined by Mrs SoBad. We visited some amazing places, fitted in some walks, came across lots of people - - lots of traffic too. A huge thank you to the COs for hiding caches which presented us with puzzles to solve, took us to great places, were cleverly camouflaged, were cunningly hidden - - sometimes in plain sight - - all of the above and of course an equal thank you for the ones that just gave us one more smilie. We really really appreciated them all. Thanks !

Found with inss on this beautiful Auckland day.
Interesting hide
Thank you for the Cache

Oh that ponga. Mrs SoBad was caching as part of a group from Nelson and this was one of the caches anther in the team found. Nicely done. Log was signed as INSS.
Thanks.

When we initially couldn't track this down we decided to carry on to the bridge for the one there. On the way back we decided to look in a place we didn't last time and hey presto there it was. TFTC # 15, 942

Checked here today all good nothing missing.

I'm certain I found the object that matched the description and all comments but there was a hole in it and I'm certain the bison has fallen out

Easy find with Title.....thanks...
All good here.. .

Second time looking. Found it once the coast was clear of muggles.

We failed to find this one a year ago now. We came back today with a lot of resolve and after a good 15 min searching all around we spotted it. Last time, we almost only look on the other side of the track. Nice hide and glad to finally find it. TFTC

We found this cache on the second pass (at first we were just repeating the cache name!)
Nice tidy hidey spot.
TFTC!

All clear tomorrow. Have fun caching but keep safe.

Will enable again when we are given the all clear.

Took a while to realise what the name of the cache meant. But we got there eventually!

What a lovely walkway! I came here early this morning but no luck. Or my eyes were still asleep : D Thanks to a hint from CO Georick I found it this afternoon during my second attempt. And it was still a lovely walkway between the burroughs. Thanks for the help and tge cache!

Missed this on first pass. On my return I had another go. Thought it was on one side, but turned out to be the other. Glad to find it. TFTC

This time I took the time to interpret the hint. Thanks for the cache.

Checked and all still good here.

No luck for us here

Day one of the streak, and as suggested the ground is very boggy

This morning I had some spare time to go out and about finding a few caches before I had to head to the airport and home. I headed off from my hotel in the direction of Devonport and then circled back towards where I started. Overshot the cache by a few metres but when my GPS settled I had a look around. Saw something that made sense but wasn't what I had expected - it was the cache though and that's all that mattered. TFTC, Biggles.

This cache has been my nemesis for some time. I came today with nufrat and she spotted it within 30 seconds of our arrival. It pay to cache with another pair of eyes, especially when they can see things you are having trouble seeing. TFTC.

out with agazo today, no idea why he's had trouble finding this one, easy as, but thats caching, tftc

Out to make a couple of finds today. Surveyed the area for a bit walking up and down. Then spied the object and managed to get myself in the bushes so to speak. Whilst I was half crouched and hidden, signing the log, a walker came by and I held my breath. I didn't want to frighten him lol... Nice camo here. SL. TFTC.

Took a couple of moments to get my head in the game here.

Checked here today all still good. It hasn't gone missing. Have fun finding it.

Thanks for the walk.

Thought it was going to be tricky as no tree looked distinctive. Gave up and then had another look for this botanically confusing fellow on our return journey. Fewer muggles this time and was spotted relatively easily. Tftc

Happened to be meeting fellow geocachers in Devonport, so I headed out early to find the caches in Hauraki. A nice walk to GZ with a few muggles around. Initially I was searching on the wrong side of the path after following a very obvious geotrail. Didn't find the cache but did find an old tennis ball. Realised that this was a higher terrain than required. Reassessed the situation and soon spotted where the hide could be. Had to wait for a slow muggle to wander past before extracting the cache. Just as I returned the cache the same muggle turned around and headed back my way. Pretended like I had just retrieved the ball before heading on.

Geocaching on the bike in this part of Auckland. Nice and handy hide. Thanks!

Good sport for a cache.

Nice we hide on this but cords were close tom the mark and something was a little out of place that made retrieval of a very well DRY and reasonably sized cache.
TFTC and the walk along this route

I cycle along the walkway regularly witha group. Today was just caching, so stopped for the find. Thanks GeoRick.

There were quite a few muggles around today so we had to be extra careful.
When the coast was clear we checked a few spots and were pleased to make a reasonably quick find despite the nice camo.
Our timing was perfect as no muggles came along while we were signing the log but as soon as we had put the cache back in place a couple of muggles came around the corner ahead. Had they been a split second earlier they would have seen what we were up to.
Thanks GeoRick for a great hide on a nice walkway.

Nice stroll down to GZ , with time spent reading previous logs. No initial clue as to which direction to look but once the GPS settled followed the arrow. After a brief search saw something that fitted the description. The hardest part was the retrieval. Signed and replaced as found. Not quite as tricky as we thought. TFTC

This took a bit of hunting, but Mrs TWS spotted it in the end, cords are good, good camo

TFTC

Some people say that this hobby is not "all about number", how wrong they are. Especially when you set a personal challenge to keep your interest in this great hobby going. Over the years I have done this and this year (well it goes until 29/2/2020) is no different. So on to most caches that I can find.

What one? Aaahh! That one. Yahoo!

Cheers for the cache.

Out on this nice sunny day today and collecting the caches as we go.Made hard work of this one and even some little girls stopped to ask what to my partner what i was up to in the bushes but once i was out they were soon on there way.took us a bit more time the other side of the path and then we spotted it.great cameo and definately our biggest challenge so far today.

Having set myself a personal caching goal for the year (or at least whats left of it) I thought I had better crack into it and start collecting so that hopefully the last 6 months of the years is far more productive than the first 6 months. So heading up to collect a few caches around Devonport area nice and early meant leaving not to early, 5am and home by 2pm, so managed to avoid most of the peninsula traffic that is an absolute nightmare.

Great collection of caches and hides to be had, and ever grateful for the toolbox of magic tricks in the boot of the Geowagon that enabled me to collect a number of the more interesting caches. So all in all 41 successful finds today. All caches today signed "CD" to save log space.
The place was all quiet as parked here along Bayswater Road and made the walk to the caches nearby. Pleased with the quick find and well diguised cache.
Thanks to all the CO's for their contributions, thanks for the cache.

This was a very tricky find and took us quite a while. There looked to be quite a few places to search for a cache on both sides of the path and we wandered up and down looking for a bit and dodging the incredibly big number of muggles that were coming through here, it's clearly a very popular path.

After a bit of fruitless searching we took a bit of a closer look on google maps and came up with a good spot and after a while also came up with the cache. Quite tricky, one of the harder ones we did today so glad when we finally managed to knock it off. Too much swag to drop a tb and we didn't swap so all good here. Thanks for the cache.

Out and about caching over the shore and I have FMZ with me too for company. Originally he and I were heading to Rotorua for the day to chase down the souvenirs for the magical creatures series. But a few FTF's got in the way so to speak so ended up over the Shore instead and never made it to Rotorua after-all! We are picking out caches that we both haven't done and FMZ is deciding what they are as we drive around.

I said to FMZ we need to come here, I had DNF'd this and I need another pair of eyes to help me search again. Walked to GZ, but I could see if we lifted the pole up we could have driven down, but me mate cautioned me about that! We had a search for several minutes then I spotted the cache! Not that it was an easy find and I probably walked past it several times on my last visit - who knows.... but a find is a find and I'm happy to log this as a smiley. Cheers Georick, nicely hidden.

Not a super quick find but after exploring spots that were too difficult terrain to be 1.5, we eventually found it in a much easier spot. TFTC!!!

Log later

Our phones couldn't decide which side of the path we needed to be on so we searched both and I eventually spied something that was worth investigating and sure enough it was the cache

Well who would have thought one of them was here.

Had a reasonable look but couldn't find it. There's a lot of vines growing over everything near the gz so not sure if it was covered over or we just weren't looking in the right place! Thinking of the name of the cache again I've got an idea for a more targeted search next time.

On the shore so Checked...
It's still here Gorby...!

Shame.. I spent far more time here than I should have.... probably 20 mins or more, but my persistence did not reveal a cache! I'm sure it's probably there, but just not for me today even though I rang a friend who was a previous finder!

Checked this one today due to the DNF. All good here.

Did not find.

Wandered about here and there before spotting what I was after.
Tftc

Took Miss Two and I a little while to spot, but we got there in the end. Thanks!

Took a while to find, had to look very carefully before I finally spotted what I had been looking for.

TFTC

Good hide!
Accurate coords
All ok
Thanks

Three from three along here on a nice Saturday morning. Another very cool camo, thanks GeoRick, left TB

I was heading down this way to get some dinner so figured I may aswell wander over to GZ. I parked up and headed down the bicycle trail. I didn't have my GPSr, so was caching via phone, which is always a bit sketchy. But with a careful eye I soon spotted something of interest. Closer inspection confirmed the find. Right, dinner time. Cheers for the cache placement!

Last cache on the shore for us. What a pretty map full of smiley faces. This one had us going for a little while but we weren't leaving without finding it. Got there in the end. TFTC

This certainly was a surprise !
Was shopping for a present at St Lukes when I saw 2 caches come out ....
Was pretty sure the Kelston one would be found quickly ....But thought I would go and sign off the Bayswater one anyway ....as I was going to a movie at Bridgeway at 8.20 and had an hour or two to fill in.
Was very surprised to get the { FTF }.
Very interesting to read on the board by the bridge about the 11 birds who inhabit this special area ...and the various plants which abound .
Thanks GeoRick . Added some more toys to swap !
( I got talking to a local ; and he told me a homeless person lives in a tent in the bushes on the other side of the path ! )
Allow plenty of time to find and sign ; as lots of people use this walkway ..... Was so nice it was released in daylight too !

Published