Geocaching Cook Islands

By
Tayla Beddoes
Photography By
Kieran Scott
Kia Orana everyone, warmest greetings from a little paradise and welcome back to the blog! This week's post is one that's been a long time coming: Geocaching in the Cook Islands.

But first a few updates! Don’t worry they won’t take too long. So if you read the first post for the Love a Little Paradise Blog then you should recall my little dilemma of not being able to provide you with regular updates on a weekly basis due to the fact that I’d be the sole contributor. Thankfully that’s no longer applicable! Yep, expect weekly updates from this space because EVERYONE (or well, mostly everyone) at #TeamTourism has agreed to help contribute pieces for the blog! So each week rather than hearing from your fav red head on the rock (yes, I’m from the Cook Islands and I have red hair - weird) you’ll be hearing from different hardworking members of Cook Islands Tourism. Now back to the main reason why you’re here: Geocaching.

To put it plainly, Geocaching is the basically the world’s largest treasure hunt… People from places all over the world, travel to different places in the world and use GPS to hide and seek containers (otherwise known as "geocaches" or "cache" for short) at specific locations marked by coordinates. Sounds pretty epic, right? And now thanks to the hard work our Online Department has done racing in and out of the office the past month placing and creating new geocaches around on Rarotonga, the Cook Islands will hopefully be on their radar!

So how can I do it?

Well the great thing about Geocaching is that anyone can do it. First things first, head over to the geocaching website and create an account. There you'll also be brought up to speed on geocaching; when it was founded, why it was founded, how you can not only find but also plant your own caches so long as it meets the official geocaching guidelines - but I'm getting ahead of myself! For now, just create an account. Once that's done you can see if there's any geocaches hidden near you and just like that - the adventure begins! Grab a GPS, grab a friend and get out the door and find some geocaches! 

Something to note is that there are several different types of geocaches that can be planted so not all will be the same. Most caches found around the world, like the ones we decide to plant here in Rarotonga, are the 'Traditional Geocache'. A container (though the size may vary) containing a log book, pen/pencil and instructions. Larger containers may contain items for trade - where someone who visited the geocache before you did, leaves something small behind for the next person to replace with an object of their own. But that's only one type of geocache - there's also Mystery Caches or Puzzle Caches and Multi-Cache's to name a few waiting to be found.

Now this is a little trial run for us - so far there are 19 geocaches hidden at various points around the island. Some are relatively easy to find and others... Well, not so much. We do however plan on eventually adding different types of geocaches later on down the track but will type up a sequel if this becomes the case.

We're also going to be creating some posts about geocaching on our social spaces so be sure to keep an eye out for it! And if you decide to get out on a geocaching-mission this week, let us know if you managed to find any and how hard or easy it was for you to do so. 

That's it for me this week! You'll most definitely be hearing from a different member of #TeamTourism next week so until then...

Ka Kite for now,

Tayla