Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Bahrain caches

I visited Bahrain three weeks ago with family and found 4 caches in one day and managed to hide one of my own .. it was a real treat. We started our search early morning by bagging one in the ancient graveyard of Sitra. I thought the vicinity was a nice easy and accessible place to hide the first GeoPost cache in the Gulf. I first learned about this special cache from geocaching online and so I decided to make one myself. Next we moved south to find two caches not far apart. A great place for Barby was on a small mound .. I spotted the cache from below and pointed it to my son. After logging it we moved to mammalian protuberance. This was a long overdue cache for me and found by my wife.

The fourth was a special one and neatly stashed in Bahrain Fort. My wife and I arrived at sunset. It was a cool November evening with the Fort lit from the ground up .. great photo opportunities. Google Earth placed the cache on the northern perimeter of the castle which fooled me since it was further inside. We searched in the wrong place for about 15 minutes before I realized from the difficulty rating and the style of the setter and his previous hides that this should not be too complicated.
It then occurred to me that we may be searching in the wrong place and indeed we were. The place inward was even more fascinating at night time and we found the cache inside a window just like it was described. I dropped a Saudi coin and left with a great sense of satisfaction.

Geocaching and walking

As a geocacher, walking is part of the game. I’m overweight and I don’t exercise but I try to walk specially with my younger brother who is more athletic and fit than I am. We started to walk on a regular basis .. not much, may be 1.5 to 2.5 km around my house in Dammam. One day he said let’s go for a longer walk – longer to me was like 3 to 4 km - so I said Ok. We walked for 5km to the Sheraton Hotel in Dammam. It felt good and I said why stop here and we continued for another 5km to the corniche. That was a total of 10km .. it was a great accomplishment for me; but not to my brother. Next time he said let’s go for a longer walk and on Ramadan eve, we set out to walk to Al-Khobar. We made the 19km walk in about 3.5hours without break. Now he wants to go further .. Bahrian is on his agenda but I doubt it.