Today is a Chilean holiday, and pretty much everything is closed, including my husband's office. It was a perfect sunny afternoon for the entire family to go geocaching around our Santiago neighborhood.
"Geo...wha?", is what I uttered when Pat first mentioned this international hipster phenomenon to me yesterday. Geocaching, I've since discovered, is basically a high-tech outdoor international hide and seek/treasure hunt game. It's origin corresponds with the public accessing of the GPS system in May of 2000, which participants use to locate a "cache".
Caches are typically small waterproof containers with a pencil and a log roll inside. Once located, participants log their name, date of the find, and then place the cache back in the exact same spot in which it was found. Sometimes larger containers are hidden that may house trinkets of minor value or perhaps items with sentimental value. When a participant finds a container with stuff inside, they are supposed to replace it with something of equal value. Here is the official Geocaching website if you're interested in learning more: https://www.geocaching.com/play Wikipedia also has a detailed entry on the phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocaching
Santiago apparently has 74 geocaches hidden around the city! Our neighborhood is supposed to have two, but we were only able to locate one. Still, it was pretty exciting to find the first one--which was a small, yellow, magnetic container with a smiley-face that was attached to a water pipe in a park.
The second one is supposed to be hidden in a park that the kids and I go to on an almost daily basis. We spent a considerable amount of time searching for it, but to no avail. We may look again tomorrow if the kids are still interested. Indianapolis is also home to its own collection of caches, and while I'm eager to come home for a variety of reasons, now I can add geocaching in Indy to the list!
Caches are typically small waterproof containers with a pencil and a log roll inside. Once located, participants log their name, date of the find, and then place the cache back in the exact same spot in which it was found. Sometimes larger containers are hidden that may house trinkets of minor value or perhaps items with sentimental value. When a participant finds a container with stuff inside, they are supposed to replace it with something of equal value. Here is the official Geocaching website if you're interested in learning more: https://www.geocaching.com/play Wikipedia also has a detailed entry on the phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocaching
Santiago apparently has 74 geocaches hidden around the city! Our neighborhood is supposed to have two, but we were only able to locate one. Still, it was pretty exciting to find the first one--which was a small, yellow, magnetic container with a smiley-face that was attached to a water pipe in a park.
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