Logs for antnich 

It’s funny how we all love an old ammo can. As others have noted, there are multiple groupings of four palms, but once you know it’s an ammo can it narrows down the possibilities a little bit. 

How nice to find a super camo hide by the master on our last day in New Zealand. Fabulous view and a very clever piece of handiwork, so a definite favourite point - I still have the odd one left. I'm now sitting in the dep;arture lounge logging this one. Farewell Aotearoa!! 

Nice hint and a cute hide. 

The view from here is obscured partly by trees and partly by a rather grey day. First day without sun for about a month. Time to leave the country! 

Met a nice family here with a little boy who helped me find the treasure, as he called it. I explained to his dad what geocaching was about and he thought he might take it up with his kids. Another convert! 

On our third long visit to New Zealand we have to know what a puriri is by now. All is well here although the logbook is rather full. 

GPS seemed a bit out, but the hint made it obvious where it was. End of a nice walk. Possibly our last cache in NZ this holiday....But no, another couple are possible..... 

I didn’t need the optician here. As luck would have it, I managed to break my glasses a few weeks ago and last night I mended them very successfully with some Araldite. So I was able to use my glasses to find this one! 

Our last day in New Zealand, an amazing holiday with caching every day. This one certainly hit the mark. Thanks CO. 

We failed to find this one on the way into the park, but after having done the perimeter track I read some more logs and suddenly had a brainwave. My first thought on re-examination was correct. Brilliant hide, I do like this, and another favourite point coming your way. 

I shouldn’t Reveal And Tell what a cache is about. As we took this one out we had to Remember And Twist. After this we went Rambling Ahead Towards the next cache. 

We are fairly sure we found the correct host, but were able to locate the cache. 

I meant to claim this one over two months ago when we arrived, but with having flown in with just an brief HK stop from London we were knackered. Now 2 1/2 months later we've got time in hand so I’m claiming a find. Ugly mug shot attached! Thanks for all the fun you and your colleagues in New Zealand have given us over our holiday. 1111 finds in 72 days. Attended the meet in One Tree Hill in December and met you all. FTF each of the months of December, Jan & Feb. And 3 new earthcaches of my own published, one still awaiting an FTF. Perhaps we’ll see you and your team at the mega? 

We passed this several times since we’ve been around here, but on a sunny afternoon it was time to go on foot and grab it. Very neat little hide. 

The seat is forgotten by everybody except geocachers! Thanks, Glyn, we leave NZ tomorrow evening. Time to revisit this lovely park though. 

We made this one much too difficult for ourselves. My muggle cousin was interested in our strange obsessive hobby! 

It was so dark under the trees that I could only see where this cache was by lighting my fork handles. 

What a brilliant cache for us to choose on this one last full day of caching in New Zealand after a brilliant 11 weeks or so. We’ve done three other Adventure Lab series in other parts of New Zealand (Masterton, Tauranga, Whangarei), so when we saw this one pop up we knew where we were headed, especially as we've never been to these lovely gardens before. We did the initial five lab caches and then retreated for lunch in the rather nice restaurant. Fortified by lunch we planned a strategy for the seven waypoints on this bonus cache. I made a diagrammatic map on a scrap of paper so we could choose the most economical route between them. Luckily the last one we chose was near a seat in the shade where we could compose the email to the CO and we quickly got an automated reply indicating where the final coordinates were.
Like @McArgister before us, we gaily trotted off to GZ expecting something simple, but as if 12 stages weren’t enough for this cache there were a further 13 (possibly 14?) stages to be overcome at the final location. We quickly worked out what needed to be done, but how to do it efficiently was another matter. We weren’t as quick as @McArgister, and I think we took more like 25 minutes.

Although in the heat the final stage was at times frustrating, the utter brilliance of this cache shone through and it’s almost impossible not to give it a favourite point. Completely unique in my experience, and how to even envisage putting this together it’s beyond my brain. I’m amazed how close we were to FTF ourselves, but luckily we've already managed FTFs in December, January and February here in New Zealand. Bye-bye New Zealand geocaching! Maybe back for the Mega??

PS. We made the initial schoolboy error on labcache 1, just like @McArgister. Not letting on what that was, but I'm sure we won't be the last! 

Towards the end of a long New Zealand holiday we realised there was a cachde in Auckland that we could grab to fill a gap in our Jasmer challenge. Lovely walk through the urban oasis, and a quick find at GZ. 

Well, that’s not the cache I was expecting and it’s a lot more exciting and interesting than I was expecting to find. Hellish noisy place, but at least no muggles are going to come here. 

This is what I wrote in June 2019 in readiness for our NZ visit:
"My challenge is to find 1000 caches in 3 different countries. So far, well over 1000 in UK (pocket query limited to 1000), 836 in France and 722 in New Zealand. We will be over the 1000 in France after this summer, and hope to get at least 278 in NZ when we visit in NZ summer 2019."
So what are the numbers now?
UK 2930
France 1166
New Zealand 1840 plus this one!!
All numbers from my statistics page.

Thank you for a great idea. No problem with the find at GZ, and an interesting and new part of the city for us to visit. Bit like a film set for a gangster movie! 

We added this on to our adventure lab series as we were nearby. I’ve no idea what the hint means and I’m sure the plant it’s near is not a flax. However there was something very obvious out of place that I nearly tripped over, and, blow me down, I was standing on the cache. 

Another lovely bit of the peninsula to explore, especially good at low tide with the wave cut platform and the little caves. Answers sent to CO. 

We've found severfal of the public library caches in New Zealand and this is another one of them. No problem finding it here but nice to see the original book from 2011. Saw some familiar names as well. 

A quick p ‘n’ g if ever I saw one! 

Great view but hellish noisy. Pohutukawas have a lot of base to search! TFTC 

Second DNF in a row. The last person to find this nearly a year ago said it wasn’t at the hint location. In February a year later the grass is incredibly thick and we found nothing. 

A very good example of this type of hide. Glad we followed the hint and not the GPS! 

I was near certain as I can be that this one is missing. It’s easy to climb on the wooden pile up and look in the space at the front of the model boat. There was a small piece of wood and a stone such as you would have over a cache but nothing underneath. 

Our second library cache of the day. The first one was in Whangarei and now this brilliant one here. Each brilliant in their own way. 

This one was not on the third step up or anywhere near it, but like we are always told to do, it’s back where I found it. Much nearer the top of the steps and visible as you walk up in case you're mystified by the hint. Crucial for us to get this old one as it fills a gap in our Jasmer grid!! 

We spent ages looking for this, to us, both before and after going out to the point, but couldn’t home in on the elusive pipe we were searching for. The old concrete structures are incredibly overgrown with prickly trees now, so not a very pleasant place to search in all honesty. 

That was fun! Although, at the age of nearly 70, I have to remind myself I’m not the lithe rockclimber I used to think I was when I was in my 20s. Anyway I was relieved to see that the cache didn’t require a hunt, and it’s all in very good condition. I don’t think the concern about the cable tie is real as plastic lasts almost forever. After retrieving the cache I made the final few rocky steps to the tri point which in all honesty felt safer then going up and down what felt like near vertical dust. 

That’s a lovely container that blends in so well. Excellent. 

Well worth making a detour to this lovely quiet bay. The perfect hint made for a quick find. The little eclipse tin seems slightly precarious, so I’ve wedged it under a root with some natural come on top. 

We tried to make as much sense of old logs as possible, making use of a comment that said it was as much inside is under. This suggested we had to try a couple of the sort of cave structures. We thought we had searched everywhere but I suspect some lucky finders have had a little bit of a nudge or a hint or local knowledge! Anyway it’s a gorgeous place for cache. Luckily we’ve filled our D/T grid so this interesting combination rating is not as crucial to us as it might be to others. 

I love caches like this, and I love it when there is a creative name as well. Back in the UK this type of hide is extremely common but not seen so often New Zealand. Great fun always. 

This geocacher reported that the logbook is full. 

Sometimes I wonder why I go for these tricky cache! But there was no danger involved here. I took the ‘over the top’ approach and in fact it looks as if a lot of the gorse has been cut down and there is a semblance of a “track” most of the way. I took a couple of false turns before I homed in on the beacon, and then everything matched up with the hint and I was very relieved. The journey back took about 1/10th of the time it took me to get there as by then I knew the way. 

My first thought about what constitutes a sky table turned out to be correct, but my initial search was incomplete. CatNich went back to the same place and had her hands on it. Fabulous ridge and great views don’t take that much effort.
 

I like this cache a lot. The view from the posted coordinates is superb with a lovely seat there, and the way that you get to GZ to find the cache is very clever and simple. Everything is perfect at GZ and it gets a favourite from me. 

Once again it’s nice to let geocaching take you off the beaten track to somewhere a bit different. The bamboo here is quite amazing! 

That was a strange one! Coming off this residential road into an area of bush that is used for fly tipping, and then aiming for an obvious large Totara. At GZ I was amazed to find the tiny container hanging on to a vertical 3 mm root spike. Incredible to have such a small cache in such an overgrown area and still have it easy to find. Unfortunately like most bison containers just one leaks (mine certainly do - design fault) so I wasn’t able to sign the log. 

After yesterday’s exertions on Mt Lion we thought we’d go for a flat a walk today and this one caught our eye. No sensible way to make it into a circuit but an out and back seemed sensible. Convenient parking right near the first cache which was found fairly straightforwardly according to a helpful hint. Unfortunately there was difficulty extracting the log paper from the narrow neck of the bottle but managed it okay. 

I love this cache to bits! The challenge of trying to find your way to somewhere in New Zealand when it’s in the middle of some bush and there could be loads of false trials is so fascinating. Luckily I chanced upon an old log where people were following the trail that we were doing and referred to a path that I thought we’d already seen. Unfortunately at the fork in the path I hadn’t read the hint suggesting we keep near the stream, so we backtracked a little and then followed an absolutely delightful path, the very antithesis of the manicured paths DOC love, and at GZ the host was so obvious. For me this is perfection, a geocacher’s geocache if ever I saw one. And to add to the fun it’s over two years since the last find. Favourite point for sure!! 

This is a fabulous place to have a cache, but I’m a little surprised it’s so close to a private property sign. But hey, who cares when there’s no one around and it’s so beautiful? TFTC 

Yet another magnificent large New Zealand tree. I love them all. Took me two circumnavigations to get this one. 

This is getting to be a really good afternoon finding the puzzle caches I solved back in the UK many months ago. I could never have envisaged how wonderful the weather was going to be and I sat my computer with the wind howling and the rain driving at the window. Access to GZ is always fun when the special New Zealand grass has grown so high, but looks as if you could walk on it without falling over. Wrong! 

At GZ it felt a bit like trespassing, but we found an obvious large host. From a previous log we knew that the container had become detached from its host stick, and luckily the recent leaf fall hasn’t buried the container which I saw peeping through. Always fun to solve these puzzles in advance of a long caching tour - this was another good one. 

We had high hopes for this one as we knew the trees had been cut down, but vegetation is very heavy at this time of February and we had no joy.