MM#9 Crest (Whangarei) Maungatapere, North Island, New Zealand
By TJAY & RAPTOR on 30-Jan-20. Waypoint GC8JRXJ

Out for a brief drive whilst Mrs Msc20 is with family.After a DNF at my previous cache I was concerned that another hunt in an overgrown area might yield the same result. No such problems with this one. Tiny, but soon spotted. Thanks TJAY & RAPTOR#5552Logged using Cachly.

Out doing a little caching today and drove past GZ to have another look for this one, Success this time locating the cache quickly. TFTC

Thanks for the puzzle, solved it a while ago and went out for a drive this afternoon and called in to grab this cache on the way home. Quick find at GZ.

This hide reminded me of a monarch butterfly chrysalis ready to hatch.

Third day in the land of the long white cloud. TeamARF, JACSTeam and I grabbed some interesting puzzles but alas missed out on an oldie as the mountain was closed. Very windy NZ roads testing our driving skills! Thanks for all the amazing caches

Solved all the puzzles in this series prior to leaving Aust. We had aspirations to collect them all but a few hides beat us. Not saying they weren't there, just that we couldn't spot the hides. Not so with this hide where we had a find. Thanks for putting this series together TJAY & RAPTOR.

Day 2: We ( TeamARF, Gcoven and myself) have travelled over from Brisbane, Australia to have a visit since we were not able to make it to the Mega. We have spent some considerable time solving puzzles and making plans in preparation.

Today the plan is to work on completing a challenge we have set for ourselves, attend our early morning event. I’m taking part in a parkrun and then doing some general caching in the CBD and further north to our next accommodation. We have a gigantic list of old, interesting, highly favourited, challenges and a few Geo-arts to try and collect over the next 10 days. There is a good chance we got lazy with our logging and do some joint variation of our initials - TGJ, GJT or JGT.

Please excuse the generic log, just have extremely little data to try and survive on it for the 10 days. However, you can be assured that if we have found your cache it was special to us for some reason or in a special location - so thank you for contributing to our holiday.

I will edit logs when back in Brisbane to add more details to those that need more details and of course I will be adding favourite points as I go along.

Pleasingly quick find by a flooded field. TFTC from

09:15 Day 2 of a 3 day expedition to the areas north of Auckland with Crystal Fairy and Barefootguru, (joined today by Bruzie) most logs signed as BBIC to save space and time. The focus of the trip was to find a number of puzzle caches solved over the last couple of years, plus other caches of interest we passed.

Spotted just above where a snail was lurking (snail now relocated). Warning, spotted a wasps nest under construction nearby, so take care.

TFTC TJAY & RAPTOR for placing this cache, number 11978 for me.

Final day (3) of our three day Geocaching trip to Whangarei. This stage included a large loop to the West of Whangarei picking up solved puzzles and then heading south getting some of the most northern caches in Auckland and then heading back to the airport for a flight back to Wellington. It rained on and off through the morning and some caches were done in pouring rain whilst others were in gaps in between. We signed the log as BIC for BFG, Infoferret and CrystalFairy.

Next up was the MM series. Quite a few DNF's but could have been due to rain that we didn't find them. Luckily some of them were "inside" and so we had a reprive from the rain. Thanks for the puzzles and series..

First thought it was on the big object, but the GPS pointed us further away and eventually we spotted the tiny nano. T4TC

I'm up in Whangarei for 2 nights, Friday and Saturday, for a few reasons:
1. A CITO organised by Riser5
2. Rustynz's 8000th milestone cache on Mnt Manaia
3. I have been wanting to see the new Hundertwasser museum
4. 8 earth caches as part of a challenge cache I signed in on from the USA

I parked the car facing the oncoming traffic, but off the road off course! made for a quick getaway. No worries with this cache.

Solved these last night so decided to get out and about in the wet with the kids to get a few of these caches. Another one that took a bit. Missed seeing it the first glace over things. Came back and spotted it. Signed and replaced. TFTC on this very wet northland day.

The elder future finder and I are heading into Northland to visit family for the day. We are stopping to pick up some finds along the way to help break up the trip. We made a slight detour, of sorts, to collect a few of the MM# puzzle series of hides. Fun fact, I actually solved "Crest 2" before this one. I don't have the clearest recollection of solving this one but I don't think it proved too much of a challenge. I parked up at GZ and got to searching. Good coordinates meant I was quickly looking in the exact right spot. I actually made a pretty quick find here and was feeling rather lucky as I can appreciate why this could be a trick hunt at times. That is all of the MM# series that we have time for today. We will have to come back for the rest another time. Cheers for the puzzle cache placement!

**15,507**
This puzzle series was solved in advance of our trip North. This tiny little blither didn't get the better of us! TFTPC

No luck here, spent a little bit of time surveying the area, lots of junk and even an old Give Way sign thrown behind the electrical box that I grabbed to use the material for a project I am working on. Not too sure where the cache is but still may be there and been overgrown?

Cache still in place

Didn’t find. Had a good look around the area, but unable to located this one. Maybe next time.

Nice easy solve but no luck with a matching find today. Not sure where it was supposed to be hanging.

So, have had problems with this series of puzzles in getting the checker to give me the tick that I was right with my answers because the page needs to be fairly fresh for the checker to work. Unfortunately, this didn't seem to be the case here and asked a fellow cacher to help point me in the right direction. Turns out that I had the right answer all along. Feeling rather silly but with the final now in hand I made my way to GZ today and made the find harder than it should have been too. Found it before giving up and wondered how I missed it in the first place - hind sight is a wonderful thing right? Thanks for the puzzle TJAY & RAPTOR. Have learned a few things!

A DNF for me here.

A tricky little hide this. Last visit I was having issues with my GPS so was very pleased to find it today. TFTC.

Can't remember if I solved this crest one first or the other one, but one would have led me to the other as to the manner of the solve. Nice to have a diff way of solving and we had no problems in locating the cache. Thanks

GPS led me astray again on this one and couldn't locate the hanging spot.

On our caching journey up to the north with EyeSpyBen to sort out a few more caches and a couple of series, many miles driven over many days and many caches found, not to many dnfs
but lovely weather, Thanks to all the cache owners for the placements
Nice quick find but one of the side of the box is smashed put it back together the best I can
but it was awesome
Great puzzle also nice to get the final

Up this way with ABCDF4,family live out this way so it was just a Hop and a Skip to do this series
This series was on our List.Great puzzles and nice to pick up the Final

We were holidaying in Taupo when we got the notifications for these new puzzles, and since we were free we set about solving them immediately. A couple gave us a liitle more difficulty than the others, but it wasn't long before we had them all solved. Had we been home we would have given in to tempation and headed north on an FTF hunt.
We knew what to look for but it took us a little while to find the information for this one. Perseverence paid off, and then success and the coords were obtained.
Today we are heading north for a couple of days holiday in the Bay of Islands, and we made sure to allow enough time to pick up these caches on our way. Spotted the container as we got out of the car, so an easy find here thanks.

Another smilie on this wee new local puzzle series thx. Enjoying these country roads of which I travel often.

I can confirm that this cache is still in place

I'm Lis, the L part of team G0LD. We've just moved back to Maungatapere in the last few months. I was very excited earlier this week to see 14 new puzzles in the area. Unfortunately I was on my way to work that day but a plan was hatched to go out after work and pick up as many as we'd solved.


We thought we'd hunted everywhere for this but it appears not. Thanks TJAY & RAPTOR for checking up on it. This cache was definitely a tricky one to spot indeed. There was lots of traffic going past so it must have looked odd to the passing muggles as the hunting took a while. It certainly was a relief for us to sign the last blank log in the series today. Yah {FTF} with 0B80B8 at 9.47am. Thanks for the fun new puzzle series

1100. 4:01 pm. I thought I'd get an FTF but instead discovered that C:geo does not update saved caches on a live map. TFT(quick)C.

After what we thought was a good look for this one 3 days ago, I was convinced the cache had been muggled by the many school kids who get dropped off here each day. However, it must just have been a bad case of cache blindness, as a maintenance note by the CO this morning confirmed the cache was indeed still there. Oh well, another trip out for two thirds of Team G0LD again today.

Luckily the buses and school children had gone by 9:40 and the search could begin unhindered, although the amount of traffic using the road was still quite amazing. Still took a while to spot the tricky little blighter, but relieved to see the log was still blank, so were able to sign off for a joint FTF just after 9:45. Thx again Tjay & Raptor for placing this new series.

Published

Solved this one quickly this morning and then spent a good 10 minutes at GZ searching without luck. Returned for a second visit a bit later, but didn't get out to look, as numerous children had just got off the school bus and were then waiting for their pick ups to arrive.

The location is reasonably open, so not logging this as a dnf at this stage, as I rather suspect it may have been found and muggled by students in between placement and publishing.