Warning: This article will reveal the location of one geocache. If you don’t like that, leave now.
This wasn’t a big geocaching trip. In fact, I rode out on my bike specifically for just 1 cache. I didn’t really feel like weaving between all those trucks, with every driver already annoyed at having to wait 10 minutes at the traffic lights even though no work is being done on the road and it has merely been narrowed to a single lane. So I figured that taking the side roads would be better for me too.
And once I was on the street/area called Pod Zvonkem (which is a part of Dolni Zukov, which in turn is a part of Cesky Tesin) and switched on my GPS, which showed me the way along Sadova Street, I decided not to argue with the GPS (and, by extension, probably with my original plan) and set off along the back streets.
On the one hand it was really nice, because I rode through places I hadn’t been to in a long time, but the route seemed endless. Like everyone, I suppose, I prefer a flat road to one that keeps going up and down hill after hill. I didn’t regret skipping the main road, but I was worried about my spine.
After all, I’d like to keep walking in the future. Luckily, though: about a month ago I rode only as far as Trinec-Nebory, and my spine hurt so much afterwards that I had to go back by car, and I was lucky it worked out that way. And that was a short ride, only about 30 minutes. This time I was riding for almost 4h including the way back, and my spine only hurt a tiny bit towards the end, and not even enough to make me complain. Fortunately, I was almost home by then. But back to the geocaching. I arrived at the ponds and, of course, at first I did things my own way.
You can tell that a lot of people went mostly by the coordinates, because the spots the coordinates pointed to were simply full of unwrapped condoms, and people wrote in their logs that they had found “them”. “Unfortunately for me”, these people usually found the cache as well, which I only managed on my 3rd attempt, and even then only with a very detailed hint from Simonka (at least that’s the name in her email), whom I hereby greet and who wrote: “Hi, sure 🙂
The cache is close to the barrier. If you stand with your back to the barrier (so that you’re looking at both ponds), walk a little to the left, and I think the cache is a kind of stick with a hollow hole.. I hope that helped at least a bit, let me know if the hunt was successful :-)” The coordinates really did lead almost into the water, but I’ve already got used to that with caches by the TTS Team: the coordinates can only be taken as a very rough guide, and it’s much better to rely on your own reasoning, intuition and experience.
Unfortunately, I have none of those 🙁 :D. So when all I’d found was an anthill and I was brushing ants off myself, I told myself it was time for the hint. And suddenly I found the cache! I don’t understand why I hadn’t found it before, since this was my 3rd time here and I had always searched the whole area in detail, but that’s just me.
It would never have occurred to me that the cache could be there – but then, as I said, my intuition and powers of observation are weak. I’ve already confirmed that many times with a whole bunch of other caches by this owner. As I was leaving, I said goodbye to a man and his little son who had arrived on a powerful motorcycle, and as they arrived and were getting off it, I asked them whether they were going to look for the cache.
The man said, “We’re not looking for a cache.” and you know the rest. It was my first geocaching outing in a long time, more than a month, because on gc.com my Your Logs (Last 30 Days) list is completely empty at the moment.
You can find photos of this cache here: Cache photos – Google+ shut down in 2019.