GeoCaching and Cruising

Caching has taken us to some fantastic spots both on cruises and land vacations. So far we have cached in 69 countries and DH's goal is to hit 100!

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I was on the Princess Baltic from 26 July - Aug 6, 8 stops. Picked up 61 caches while touring. plus held 8 events.

I have gpx files if you want them.

Mel

We took the Aegean odyssey from Venice to Athens. We were only able to pick up 17 caches in 10 days. Croatia and Greece don't have as many caches as other places in Europe.

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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

As someone else noted the cache is "GC2NV7E - Princess Cays Pirate Cove". I found this one last year and it's fairly easy. It can be quite a walk but there is a shuttle that can get you closer. After getting off the tender, cross over the arch where they want to take your picture, and then look for the shuttle to the private bungalows and fishing area. It looks like anyone can ride the shuttle. Take it to the end and then walk the rest of the way. You might need to walk all the way back if you don't see the shuttle.

If you're just going ashore, this is probably the only cache you'll be able to get to. There are a couple of others further out the island. You would probably need a car/cab to get to these.

Last year we found squaredancer44 on our roll call from Cruise Critic. It was awesome. Just finding someone else who cached and cruise was great. The best part was all the travel bugs we had with us. We were able to give them some to move along.

Some advice...travel bugs Dont dont do well if taken on a cruise. I released one in Hell, Grand Cayman and it disappeared.

Having done a few along the way, there is no way to do caching and a ship excursion as well. We have booked private tours and have had good success. We have two more we are doing this year. We asked for someone in Cozumel that knew about it. Will let you knowmhownit goes!!!

I agree with "geocachcing fun" on the travel bugs I have have released several and most have disappeared. But then that happens to quite a few I've released at home also. I have picked up several and brought them home. I also have a personal TB that I take to log miles. It has over 55, 000 miles on it.

I would disagree some on excursions. They do complicate things but it kind of depends on your objectives. I do geocachcing as secondary to my cruising. Have been on seven cruises and do excursions in most ports. I've only missed finding caches in a couple of ports. One was because we were meeting family that lived in the area for lunch. Off the top of my head, I can even think of half a dozen or so excursions where I found a geocache on the excursion. Hope to find one on an excursion in Belize in a week or so.

I love geocachcing while we travel and have meet some interesting people. On our last cruise in Canada, I met a guy from Edinburgh who flies to the US often and got some hints on flights for the trip we're planning for next year. Meet him at a cache when we were both on the same excursion.

What great posts everyone. For future finders, if you don't have maps for the ports of call, the options are:

• a printed map
  
• using an iPhone, if you load the application called Geosphere (from in the Applicaton store, you will have maps for all the islands.
  

Geosphere costs about $5 for a lifetime but in my view, quite worthwhile. I load my pocket queries for the islands into Geoshere so I'm up to date on where the caches are. Naturally, I run a pocket query (for premium members only) and load it into Geosphere.

I plan on bringing my iPhone for how to get there and use my GPS for an accurate location of the cache.

If you plan on sailing on FEb. 16th on Legend of the Seas from Fort Lauderdale, let me know by posting on this thread.

Update on our Baltic cruise in Aug 2014 out of Amsterdam on the Costa Romantica. Had a blast, found caches in every port, except St Petersburg, and met fellow cachers in most. We HAD to take an excursion to get off the boat in Russia. It was well worth it but frustrating to drive right by several cache locations and not be able to stop! We didn't have enough time at any one stop to walk to GZ, hunt, then walk back to catch the bus and with no visa we didn't want to be out on our own!

We geocached in Roatan last year, but didn't have time at our other ports since we were on all day excursions. I hope to find at least one on our next cruise.

We've cached on a lot of Caribbean islands. We usually do our own thing and hire a cab driver at the port. We are amazed at how helpful and into caching some of the cab drivers become. Sometimes they are more determined than we are to find a cache.

We've also directed some cab drivers to areas of their island that they've never been to. Caching has led to some fascinating sights and discoveries!

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Been on several Caribbean cruise before I started geocaching. Boy, I could kick myself for not knowing about it sooner!!!

Hubby and I are taking an Alaskan cruise 9/1/15 (Carnival Legend) and will want to get a few caches along the way. Anyone else? Or any cachers out there have advice or tips on caches to look for in Juneau, Skagway, Seattle, or Ketchikan? Would love to hear from you!

Spotted the word geocaching as I was getting ready to mark everything read. Had no idea there was a special link for geocaching cruisers. For those that geocache around the world, used a Garmin GPS and need maps, check out this link.

OpenStreetMap

A little complicated but you will get the hang of it after the first time. I use the Garmin maps for North America and Europe but for anywhere else I use this site. So far we have cached in 50 countries and hope to add another dozen or so within the next twelve months.

We have three upcoming B2B cruises. Normally I don't list what we are doing but just on the off chance there might be another geocacher out there on the same cruises here you go...

Celebrity Millennium 4/9/15, 4/26/15

RCCL Liberty of the Seas 11/1/15, 11/13/15

Celebrity Millennium 1/3/16, 1/17/16

Hi Jennifer - I remember that the caches in Skagway were especially fun and there were quite a few that were easy to walk to. Have fun!

geospyder - wow - 50 countries! That's impressive.

I like caching on a cruise because you never know what you might see...often out of the way, interesting spots.

Cheers, Dee

aka The Muskox

Off on the Grandeur on April 18th to Cozumel, Georgetown, Falmouth, and Labadee. Cozumel and Georgetown have a number of caches that a long walk can deliver, but very few accessible ones at the last two. I'm may set up event caches on the 24th for Falmouth and the 25th for Labadee. (There's one cache at Labadee, but I logged it some time ago.) I've found the Eastern Caribbean great for caching, with Saint Martin outstanding if you like long walks and good climbs!

I was denied an event in labadee because it's a private area but saw others get posted after that. I find if you put gz in an area that looks on their map as outside of the area you might get one through. Or maybe it depends on what side of the bed the reviewer got up on.

Tim

I've just had two event caches published for April 24th and 25th at Falmouth, Jamaica and Labadee. GC5QNVD and GC5QNYT

Grandeur cruisers please take note and add your "Will attends".

We'll be going on our first cruise in January to the Caribbean and will definitely have to cache some along the way. At least one at each stop, though an EarthCache/virtual plus a traditional at each wouldn't be bad either. It looks like most excursions have a cache placed nearby as well.

In addition to geocaching you may want to check out the Google game "Ingress". It requires you to go to real world locations based on your phone's GPS in order to play the game. Many of the locations are historical or artistic sites/items.

DH and I were just talking recently about how fun it would be to start geocaching. I hadn't even thought about pairing it with cruising! Thanks for the awesome ideas! :D

Been geocaching on a dozen cruises, Most fun aside from the land caches is I host an event near the dock at each foreign port. Had over 80 cachers show up in Sweden, and the best was getting a Virtual in Munich since we were there during Octoberfestt.

Anyone doing the Princess on June 11 from Athens to Barcelona??

Love to meet you and cache a few ports.

We have cached on our Alaskan cruise and our Panama Canal cruise. Some places we had to get virtual caches (Panama) but we have gotten one at every port. Aruba was especially fun! We are headed to Mexico on Empress in 2 weeks and I hope to get caches at each port.

We got some great geocaches this year on our cruise. Dropped off 2 travel bugs in Labadee. One disappeared, the other came right back to Florida, but the person who brought it from Labadee kept it going and dropped it off in Finland where it is making the rounds there.

We will be on the Freedom again for the Jan. 29th sailing 2017 for a 6 night. Just tossing that out there in case a geocacher spots this that will be on the same cruise. You can message me on geocaching website user name "GC Parrotheads".

If any cachers are going to be on the Oosterdam between June 17 and July 11, please send a message to Hawaiian Hairball on the geocaching website. Maybe we can meet up and do some caches!!

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Going on an Alaska Geo-Cruise June 24. All set up by a travel agent. She has others coming up. Here is her site: http://www.vacationsmadeez4u.com. Cache on.