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GeoCaching and Cruising


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I am going on my first cruise in December and I would have never thought to do this. I think this will be a good way to experience the ports and put a new twist on my experience. I will call it my own little treasure hunt lol.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Hi

We are on the HAL 24-day Magic Of The Mediterranean Cruise leaving Barcelona on the 6th of July 2012. We intend to take our GPS with us for geocaching. Would be great to meet up with other people with the same interest. We would like to drop of some TBs to see if they find their way back to New Zealand.

 

Cheers

 

Ian & Bronwyn (Kiwi Beginners)

Edited by bronian
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I usually bring my GPSr on cruises to geocache, but I have been using my iPhone lately to find caches because my GPSr broke. Does anyone know if my iPhone's GPS will work in the Caribbean, especially if the phone is in airline mode?

Thanks!

Christina

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I usually bring my GPSr on cruises to geocache, but I have been using my iPhone lately to find caches because my GPSr broke. Does anyone know if my iPhone's GPS will work in the Caribbean, especially if the phone is in airline mode?

Thanks!

Christina

 

The GPS will probably work BUT if you are getting information about the caches you will probably end up paying either roaming and/or data charges IF your phone works on whatever island you are on. In my experience the ships charge $2.50/min. for phone service. I usually run querys for the locations I am cruising to and download them to my computer before I leave. This is not as timely as the phone method but at least I have the information. Before I had a GPS to download to I would print out the ones I was interested in and take that with me.

 

Hope this helps.

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Thanks for the info! If I go into geocaching.com on my phone in 3G mode (no wi-fi) will I incur roaming charges? I don't understand how that works, I haven't used my iPhone outside the US before. Maybe if I go into geocaching.com and save the caches I want, then I can pull them up on the islands.

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You should discuss this with your phone service provider. If you access the net OR the phone system in ANY way you probably will incur charges. I do not have a smart phone but have used my phone in Europe and in Bermuda. It is designed to work in both environments. At $1.29 - $2.29 per minute it is NOT a way to geocache. The two systems ARE different from the US system electronically and I do not know if your phone is dual or not. Many times the provider sells phones that COULD work on both systems but they cripple it in some way so it will not. I am not sure if Bermuda is like ours or Europe. Your safest way is to purchase a new or used GPS and use that out of the country. Try to accumulate as much info as possible before you go so you will not have to pay to retrieve the information from the net.

 

Good luck and Happy Caching

 

Karen

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  • 1 month later...

I'm looking forward to my very first cruise next week to St. John, NB on the Carnival Glory! As always, I load a few caches into my (not so) trusty yellow Etrex for any trips or vacations. Looks like St. John has quite a few caches within easy walking distance of the port. Anyone else going to be caching on my cruise? (Geohandle: Shiraz-mataz)

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  • 6 months later...

Wish I had discovered this site before my Panama Canal Cruise last year. Very discouraging to not be able to find caches in some countries and ports of call. Would have been much better to have a caching partner along.

 

Anyone know of any geocaching groups on cruises in the works, besides the Caribbean one in March 2013? I am hoping to go on a cruise from Australia to/and around New Zealand possibly in January 2014. Carnival has one scheduled, but won't allow date changes in the free airfare connected with the cruise and I want to go 2 weeks early to cache Australia and stay 2 weeks after to cache in New Zealand. I will need a roommate too, so if anyone is interested, please let me know. Perhaps we can schedule a couple of events, in each country to make sure we get a smiley in each of them. Flash Mobs sound like the way to go, or a meet and greet and eat at a restaurant, possibly at one that also contains a physical cache.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The wife and I Geo Cached in Alaska. with my IPhone. They had ATT in all the ports we cached in so we had no extra charges. It was great we choose caches that were in the towns and walked all over. something we would not have done otherwise. In Juneau we ended up at the capitol building and got to wonder all over inside. We got to meet the governor and he gave us Alaska Flag pins and salmon recipes for Alaskan King Salmon. It was not what we expected when we set out on our Geo Cache hunt. We have been to mexico but I'm to afraid to cache there for fear of being robbed there. We are going in april so maybe I will find a couple around the piers there and log a few. I had a giocoin that made its way from Sacramento to the Bahamas and then to Canada and a cruiser picked it up from New York and dropped it in the Bahamas, Then another cruiser from Canada grabbed it and took it up to Canada. I do have a hand held GPS unit to use outside of the US and in places that do not have cell service in the US. My handle on geocaching dot com is bugmanbob. It has been a while since I was out caching but I still love the challenge.

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  • 3 months later...

Hey everyone: fellow cruisers and geo cachers! I haveny read through all the posts but come sept going on allure of the seas... do some caches get hidden on board? I already looked andsome caches on the islands we are going to.. super excited to find some!

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  • 5 weeks later...

Been caching for a while now. My wife and myself got into it sadly AFTER our two cruises we have taken so far.

 

I look at all the ports and caches I missed. Port of Jacksonville, Port of Ft Lauderdale, Cayman Islands, Key West, Ocho Rios, Nassau, HalfMoonCay.

 

I know some people would "couch cache" some finds after the fact. Some people rationalize, hey, I was at the Southernmost marker in Key West or the fountain at Atlantis resort....I'm logging it! Well nah, you didn't even know it was a cache when you visited.

 

Oh well, have to go back and get them for real! Now if only the wallet agreed! lol

 

I have a Magellan explorist 110. Nice paperless unit.

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  • 1 month later...

To the person who asked about geocaching outside of the USA with an iPhone. You can download all your pocket queries for each location to your iphone before you leave the USA This way you are only using the GPS on the phone and so you will not incur roaming charges. You should turn off the data to be sure you are not charged. We have done this in many foreign countries though we always bring our Garmin oregon as well

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  • 10 months later...
  • 5 weeks later...

We're addicted to geocaching since 2008 and addicted to cruising since 2011. :D

 

This autumn it will be our first time in the US and in the Caribbean since starting geocaching. Any tips for geocaching in Florida and in the Western (Labadee, Falmouth, Georgetown, Cozumel) and Eastern (Coco Cay, Charlotte Amalie, Philipsburg) Caribbean would be nice. I really appreciate that! :)

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I did a search for Princess Cays and nothing came up in the forum. I am going to this island with Princess Cruises in November and there is a cache there.

 

Has anyone logged this cache? If so, please share your thoughts.

 

Steve

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I'm curious as to how your get together was advertised/promoted? Depending on one's outlook, a dozen curious people is either disappointing:( or encouraging:). Were the attendees just "curious" or did they really want to learn about geocaching? Did you recruit any more players?

 

After speaking with a cruise enhancement lecturer on our last cruise, I started thinking that a formal presentation on geocaching would be a great cruise subject. Based on your discussion with the CD, do you think that a lecture would be welcomed?

 

Any thoughts from others about such a lecture? And, even as geoachers, would you attend such a lecture to (a) learn more about the game, (b) meet fellow cachers, and/or © plan group geocaching activities?

 

If there was a Geocaching Lecture I would attend. I am a geocacher, I have over 600 finds. Looking forward to finding one in the Bahamas in November. I can't wait....

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We're addicted to geocaching since 2008 and addicted to cruising since 2011. :D

 

This autumn it will be our first time in the US and in the Caribbean since starting geocaching. Any tips for geocaching in Florida and in the Western (Labadee, Falmouth, Georgetown, Cozumel) and Eastern (Coco Cay, Charlotte Amalie, Philipsburg) Caribbean would be nice. I really appreciate that! :)

 

We live in Tampa/St. Petersburg area. Watch out for the snakes. When in Florida, they say your are never farther away from a snake than 10' (average). Alligators if you are caching near water areas.

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  • 2 weeks later...

We have cached on a bunch of the Caribbean islands. Before we leave we run a pocket query of each port and print a geocaching map of each port. We also note the terrain rating so we don't try for a 4 or 5 if we have limited time.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Bumping this thread to see if anyone has done any caches in Bermuda, and if so, what was your experience? I see there are a lot of them.

 

Christina

 

 

️ You know you're a cruise addict if:

You know what DOtD and OBC mean.

You enter your bedroom at night and look for the towel animal.

You are reading Cruise Critic, and your cruise isn't for months, or you don't even have one booked (yet!)

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Bumping this thread to see if anyone has done any caches in Bermuda, and if so, what was your experience? I see there are a lot of them.

 

Christina

 

Hi Christina - I was there 4 years ago and only managed to find one - by the Royal Naval Dockyards. Looked for another near the ship but didn't have any luck and we had to hurry to be back on board. You should have a great time - beautiful place and lots of caches to be found! I want to go back!

Cheers!

Dee

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Thanks, Dee! I'm sure we will have fun, maybe we'll find a few caches, too!

 

Christina

 

 

️ You know you're a cruise addict if:

You know what DOtD and OBC mean.

You enter your bedroom at night and look for the towel animal.

You are reading Cruise Critic, and your cruise isn't for months, or you don't even have one booked (yet!)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Lots of good discussion here. This is my $0.02 worth :-) My wife and I have cached on all of our cruises. In many cases it's better than a shore excursion! We've only cruised the Caribbean and Alaska so far, the Baltic is coming up 26 Aug 2014. My most fun caching and cruising was in Alaska. Lots of caches within easy walking distance of the ports. Next best was Cozumel, safe walking and plenty of caches in town near the port. Our last trip to the eastern carib got us hooked up with another caching family and that was loads of fun. I used the Roll Call threads to find a fellow cacher(s). The idea of arranging a meetup via the CD is a good idea. The suggestion to research caches in your ports of call is a good one. I've already got mine picked out for our Baltic ports! They're loaded on my iPad and I'll have my trusty Garmin GPSr with me, cache locations etc already loaded. Ports vary widely in terms of cache density with larger cities naturally having the most and remote rural locations few if any. One idea worth looking into is an 'event cache'. You would need to arrange it at least two weeks in advance but I ran across two of these during our eastern carib cruise. Unfortunately neither was for the day we were in port :-( but it might be a good way to meet some local cachers. The most fun ever was running into some cachers from another ship while in Alaska. We spotted a couple of suspicious looking characters poking around a phone booth and some electrical boxes. Turns out they were cachers looking for a brand new cache that had been placed after I loaded my caches. We joined them in the hunt and found the nasty little creature.

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