In the jungle, (Marlborough) Redwoodtown, South Island, New Zealand
By Paolob72 on 24-Jun-20. Waypoint GC8VJ9X

This is a shady area in more ways than one. Looks like the container has gone so making way for a new one. Sad, my first archived hide.

This is a shady area in more ways than one. Looks like the container has gone so making way for a new one. Sad, my first archived hide.

At the turnaround point of a quiet Sunday morning run, I checked here. It looks like it is gone or hidden. I will do some soul searching before deciding whether to replace or archive.

Gps just bouncing around so no luck

Missed yesterday now I know why. Did not show on phone but was on gps. Brought gumboots and had a look. Surprisingly quick find for such a good hide. A bit boggy down here but all safe and sound. Needed teeth to extract it, sorry. Should be safe for next to find. Bring tools.

All open and good to be found.

Area may be closed for damage repair. Update when open again.

NZ at Level 4. Go home, stay home, keep us all safe. This cache is unavailable until a lower level is reached.

Found the tracks of what might have been the mighty lion - or not! See photographic evidence attached. Pretty sure I was in the right clearing but failed to spot anything that looked like a cache. On my return home, I checked a photo and was not surprised I didn't find it. Maybe another day.

Right in the jungle.....even with our thinking caps on we did not find the cache.
Looked high, low, under, above, damp feet
But good thing is we have to come back another time

After a period of cold rainy winter days, the sun is finally out, and so I'm out on the motorbike for a spot of caching. I had big plans for a ride to Rai Valley, or Pelours Bridge to get some low-hanging fruit, but some errands in the morning consumed half the day, and left me with only 3 hours of daylight. So I had to keep my adventure local, and headed out to ride along the Tuamarina Track and check out the Waikakaho, before heading back to town.
Unfortunately, the Miner's Track at the top of Waikakaho was closed due to logging action, yet I was hoping to scope it out to see if it's suitable for motorbikes. If anyone knows, please let me know. Additionally, the lack of mobile network meant I was unable to check for any caches up the valley, so will certainly need to return.

On my way back home, I remembered a recent DNF at the Taylor Dam which the CO had sent thru some communication, so I made a detour to rectify the blue sad face.
Arriving at the dam revealed two-dozen cars parked up, with nobody to be seen, until I neared the 'Little Dutch Boy' cache, where there was a swarm of small humans and their parents, who were chasing them around holding stuffed animals, seemingly a Teddy-Bear's picnic.
The little muggles were fascinated by a brightly coloured motorbike passing through their gathering, one little boy so transfixed that he forgot to stand up and lost his balance on the spot. Luckily mum was withing cactching range.

At the GZ, I had been given a set of crude instructions to follow, which included pacing out 20 steps from a landmark. I have discovered a fundamental flaw with that process, as Paolob must have longer legs than I, as those 20 paces left me standing in the open, right over a muddy pool with no hiding spots nearby. Remembering that my stride had been shortended by my restrictive motorcycling pants, I extended the trajectory to about 35 paces to a prominent site. Seconds later I spotted what I needed to, and was left pondering the container: Is it plastic? Is it real? Won't it rot? Or turn to seed? I may never know.
A FP for the help from Paolob72, TFTC

I saw a DNF on this one and after climbing the Ned this morning we stopped in here and after a couple of minutes of orientating myself found the container safe and sound.

Didn't manage to find this one.
Annoyingly, every surface was covered with a sticky smelly residue today, seems to be a seasonal problem with the aphids excreting a sort of honeydew, but not the nice kind.
Even managed to get the damn things in my face and they leave a red mess on your skin.
GPS said it was accurate to below 5 metres, but I couldn't spot anything obvious without digging deeper, and that would require getting a lot of the sticky nonsense on me.
Maybe I'll return to retry this find another time.

Not sure if it's still there to find...

Persevered and found it - my gps said 34m away! Awesome cache holder! Gets a fav for resourcefulness!

Very nice cache!

Thanks for putting out this cache for woolwood9 and I to find!
SL **tm/ww NZ** (may just be a black smudge on wet or plastic logs)
*Another good cache located, now onto the next one!*

Good short walk, took a bit to get to GZ, container spotted after a short search.

Nice to be away on another geocaching trip with tmann421, travelling to a few places in the upper South Island.
All logs signed tm/ww NZ
TFTC

Found it thanks

A good reason to take a bike ride to the Taylor Dam. Quick find due to a good geo-track into the jungle then a giveaway signal at gz, didn’t take us more than two minutes to have the log in hand. Fortunately “dee” had brought the tweezers. We were signed and gone quickly, tftc

I was just looking at the latest "Wonders of the world" challenge to see how I was getting on - and I only needed 1 to complete the "Modern wonders".
So a quick search led me to this one. Skipped away from work early and headed home to grab the bike. Thought I needed a bit of exercise at the same time.
Got to GZ area and the GPS was a bit all over the place... I could see a bit of bush bashing ahead - so I scouted around the area to find a better way. I did text a friend but before I got a reply I made the find. All tucked away well hidden... but pleased I also brought a trusty geo tool as it was needed to extract the log.
TFTC Paolob72

Surprisingly quick find, because my GPS was 8 metres out, there are a few options here, and I was on my own. But I saw something that did not quite look right, and that was it. Log was tough to get out though, but I did. Have been here before, it is quite a cool place when dry and the light is right. TFTC Paolob72.

A quiet days geocaching for me. I dropped RG72 off at the Wither Hills farm park so she could tramp around for a couple of hours. In between pick up times I got a few caches in the general area and then started work on solving a multi. The rest of the fun part of the day was taken up by the Seagnoid’s event and attending an organic wine event. It was a good day though. Thanks

We quickly spotted a track into the jungle, and although there was some water around, we were able to move around freely without getting wet feet. Our GPS was a bit variable, but reasonably consistently pointed us to an obvious location, which previous logs suggested was incorrect. Eventually we widened our search area, and spotted the nicely camouflaged cache, although for us it was about 10 metres southwest of the coordinates at S41 34.507 E173 56.055. TFTC

We were in Blenheim for the weekend. The main reason we were there is to help gk's brother shift into his new home. We had come over last night so that we could find five caches yesterday and in the hope that we might find one or two before the shift and then find the rest later in the day once the work was done.
GK was up and about early on a crisp morning, and he went for a wander to see if he could find this one. I had found one near here previously so I had a bit of an idea of what he was going to see. It wasn't too much longer before I saw GK returning but then he kept going and headed away to find our second unfound cache in this area.
By the time he returned to the campervan there was a nice hot coffee waiting for him.
Thanks for placing this cache and thank you for the smiley.

We always consider a geocaching trip over the hill worthwhile if there is the possibilty of getting double figures but of course have often 'hopped across' for less. The double figure criteria was easily fulfilled today so off we go.
We have been here before to look for a cache and from memory it was just as wet underfoot then as now. My GPS jumped around a bit here so while I inspected one item Hazedarus followed his GPS to the cache. The logs variously signed H&H, HM HZ, or with our full names today.
Thank you Paolob72.

We just don't like a lot of colour variation if it comes to our geo-map. We prefer yellow smiling back at us. Although not set in concrete we have some rules before deciding to go over the hill and numbers need to make it worth our while. At some stage we were chasing FTFs and the rules were bent a bit resulting in the Raiders series Today the numbers looked good and we hadn't been visiting for a while so off we went. We expected a different GZ somehow. Prolly because we approached it differently from our last time here. Just as wet and overgrown and with unlimited possibilities GZ presented itself. After inspecting the more obvious without success I noticed my GPS to be settled down and pointing a certain way. Trust the GPS they say and so I took a visual waypoint and navigated between puddles. At 0.71m I scanned my surrounds and all I had to do was reach out. I love it when that happens. Thank you Paolob72

Found, but couldn’t get the log out - I tried for a while with twigs, but it definitely needs tweezers. Posting a picture of the cache lid as proof of find - TFTC!

I was supposed to go planting at Grovetown Lagoon but in the end decided that I had too much to do today so skipped it, which gave me a little free time back - And what is a weekend without some free time? A waste of two good days, kin my view.

And on top of that I am working on some calendar projects. Every time I complete a calendar project I think "Yay! Now I can cache when *I* want, and not when my pocket computer says I must!" And then I fire up more calendar projects. So now I am trying to fill my calendar (again) with Small caches, fill it with non-physical (that will take a while - I have 70 dates outstanding), Micros up to two a day, and New Zealand up to 4 per day (I have found at least 5 per day across the calendar, but last week I still had not completeted the NZ calendar! That's sorted now.)

Today my pocket computer says I need a small, so I hopped in the car, shot into town, bought some 3m USB cables (nothing says "Freedom" than a 3m USB cable!) and came out here. Stopped in the middle of the road to work out where to park for the right access, parked, and walked to GZ.

Okay, this is going to be interesting. My first thought is this cache will have low survivability simply because no one will want to do it. The approach is a massive field of blackberry. Luckily cut short for now, but growing strong. Hopefully a constant flux of geocachers will keep an access available. However for now it's not a problem. Okay, first checking this side, then duck under the big branch, and check out the other side of the tree and... now what? Wow, that looks like a good place! But after checking it out I realised that a) its 24m away, and b) getting there without gumboots is pretty dodgy. I don't have my gummies with me and getting back was an interesting exercise in micro-exploration. Where else? Well, if I was me (and the last time I checked, I was), this would be a tree climb. Climb up the big branch, walk along part of the way, and get my pretend binocs out. Nothing. Nothing over that way either. Or up there. I have been here about 15 minutes by now, including checking all the bits I haven't bothered talking about. Where the hell is it? What kind of special tool does Kiwimykl suggest? (yes, by now I had read the hint and previous logs.) And then I saw the thing that NZDi saw, and knew I had found the cache. Woohoo!! Happy dance. At which point the Duh! moment! Of course it is *that* special tool - the one that Kiwimykl would most likely always carry. I didn't have mine with me, but then I have only ever had to use it once. Nature always provides, and and this time was no exception.
And back home for lunch. Leftover Indian. Chana masala. Yum!

Actually it's not that long since I found this cache's predecessor so I was pretty familiar with the site. I was enchanted by that amazing tree on my first visit but summer was definitely the best time to visit it. One member of the team spotted a likely hiding spot from a distance, another confirmed the existence of the cache and the third signed the log. Thanks for bringing me back to this special spot.

I have very fond memories of the previous cache here. Nice hide. The title of the cache reminded me a lot of one of my favourite parodies about covid 19. A few of the great lines are - In the Whitehouse, the mighty Whitehouse the liar tweets tonight....In the country, the quiet country no nurses sleep tonight....Its very good if you like that sort of thing. Enjoyed the return visit to this lovely location. TFTC # 15,665

All the members of the SIS had found the previous cache here but we had approached the area in different ways. Mrs SoBad had not realised there were options until walking towards the cache area today. We didn't have a tool but managed with what we had.
Thanks.

Published

{FTF} with NZDi. It is not often you get two bites at the cherry with a FTF chase, but that was the case here. I was just about to head off to do the weekly grocery shop when this cache was listed so I took a detour on the way to the supermarket. It was a 300 or so metre walk to GZ from the nearest convenient parking and when I got there I immediately knew I wasn't prepared for the hunt. I needed gumboots (possibly waders and clothes I didn't mind getting dirty. I made a couple of forays towards the cache , but was stymied by the water from the recent rain in one direction and fallen logs in the other.

Abandoning the chase, I placed the cache on a watch and went and got the groceries. On returning home I unpacked the groceries and had lunch and during that time the notification alert that someone else had found the cache had not gone off. So this time I got changed into more appropriate clothes and put my wellies on, grabbed NZDi and headed out for the second bite at the cherry. I also bought my Garmin as backup to my smartphone as there is no mobile coverage in the area and the tree cover was playing up with the signal first time around.

At GZ it didn't take long to get down to zero metres from the cache using the Garmin. Unfortunately, it was in the middle of a clearing with no redeeming features within 5 metres. So I broke out c:geo on the smart phone which took us in a different direction. It wasn't long before NZDi's eagle eyes spotted something that only a cacher would recognise and the cache was soon in hand, (the Garmin said the cache was 5m away). Trying to retrieve the log was a different matter though, but fortunately there is one TotT tht I always carry with me other than a writing implement and GPS enabled device, and this came in handy. Note to CO: Add a Special Tool attribute).

I had also thought about placing a cache here when I saw the incumbent recently archived, but a FTF always compensates for another placement and I have another three lined up ready to submit at any time I feel like.

TFTC Paolob72

{FTF} with Kiwimykl, refer to his log for details.

TFTC Paolob72

As suggested by the FTFers, special tool required might be appropriate.