Fathers Day in Otaki

This weekend I went up to Otaki to hang out with my dad, Sunday being Father’s Day here in New Zealand. Saturday night Dad was in a Quiz Competition at the Levin Cosmopolitan Club. His team of four won a free handle each of DB Draught as a spot prize for the inflatable bleating sheep they had on their team’s table. His team came 23th out of 31 teams, but another team from his watering hole came 3rd and won $250. Was a good fun night out 🙂

Sunday I got up, gave Dad a box of chocolates for Fathers Day. We got dressed and went to find some geocaches. I had loaded the latest set of co-ordinates on my eTrex Friday morning, and printed out the cache sheets at work on Friday before I left, but I had left the sheets at work, so we tried to wing it. We tried to find GC39AF first; Dad thought it might be at Forest Lakes but when we got there, it was still 3km away; turns out it was on the beach. So we drove up to Levin to find a cybercafe – no luck 🙁 So we drove back to home in Otaki and got my bags. Then we decided to hide a microcache out near Otaki Forks. Have fun finding that one, we had fun placing it.

After that we decided to drive me back to Paraparaumu so I could catch the train back home that afternoon. But on the way, I saw that we were about a kilometer away from a cache or two in Waikanae, and did we want to try and wing it without the cache sheet…? We decided to give GCC747 a shot. After driving around in suburbia down some cul-de-sacs we realised it was on the other side of these houses. Sarah spotted an alleyway and Dad and I got out to find it. At the end of the alleyway we discovered that the Waikanae River was there, and my fears were that the cache was 500 metres down the river, on the other side! Well, we walked 500 metres down the river and got within 40 metres of the cache and lo, the arrow pointed across the river. We turn back and head for the car. Next we tried GCC056, got to the spot the GPS thought it was, and it pointed to the middle of a Toetoe plant, aka Cutty Grass – ie, it cuts you if you walk through it. After searching for 5 minutes, we couldn’t find it – I don’t think we had the right location.

So we go get some fish and chips, eat it at Lindale, and decided to head to Paraparaumu and drive around the water front. We drove through Raumati Beach shops and lo, there was a book exchange with hi-speed internet access. We went in, printed out the cache sheet for GC38E at Queen Elizabeth Park. Drove to within 100 metres of it, got out, and walked down the tramway like the sheet said, and the GPS told us to stop and go into the bushes. We climbed a small knoll and my Dad spotted it! We found it! YAY! Dad was pretty chuffed, as after all these non-successes, he had proof that Geocaching is a real sport!

I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend… how was yours? 😉