I recently took an extended trip outside North America and caches in 6 different countries. This is a summary for anyone planning an overseas vacation.

1) Peru

As there are few/if any local cachers and vacation caches are prohibited, I hunted 4 caches in the Cusco/Sacred Valley area. Two were virtuals, and two were regulars where the containers had gone missing and had been changed to "temporary" virtuals. There are lots of good potential sites for caches if someone can be located to do maintenance.

2) France

The first time I visited France after starting caching, there were less than 300 caches in the entire country. Now there are over 1000. In Paris I hit 2 virtuals and 1 regular in 3 days. The regular one (Les Etats Unis) was placed by NC cacher OzGuff. Another is a multi-stage virtual in Pere Lachaise cemetery that takes you to the tombs of some famous people. Subsequently I hit a regular cache in the south of France near St. Remy, with some relatives. Caches are pretty sparse in this part of the country.

3) India

There are very few caches in the entire country. I hit 2 virtuals in Delhi and a small regular in Agra.

4) Nepal

Hit the only regular cache in Kathmandu in a nice city park. Muggles there include monkeys. Also a virtual in the Himalayas. Almost no Nepalis that I met while trekking had ever seen a GPSr.

5) Thailand

Some nice caches in Bangkok, although the urban micros are tough when placed among skyscrapers. EPE was always high in builtup areas. There were some nice caches in parks, although it's difficult to find good hiding spots as the parks are highly gardened and there are always lots of people around. I placed a cache in a park after getting a local cacher to agree to maintain it.

6) Seoul Korea

Some quite nice caches here, as there are numerous parks with hiking trails, and everything is accessible with public transportation.

That's an awesome account on caching conditions in other countries. How do you manage to get all over the place like that? It's fantastic!

Something tells me it wasn't by boat, especially the France-to-Nepal hop.

You should have done Erik's HI EPE cache while you were over there ... its somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

quote:

Originally posted by Cymbaline:
Something tells me it wasn't by boat, especially the France-to-Nepal hop.

Well it could have been by ship if the number were NCC-1701. I must admit that isn't very likely.

I'm going to Kyoto for a week - leaving on Saturday. In a city of one and a half million people, there are seven caches, and at least one of them seems to be missing. I'll grab as many as I can.

quote:

Originally posted by Marietta Moose:

quote:

Originally posted by Cymbaline:
Something tells me it wasn't by boat, especially the France-to-Nepal hop.

Well it could have been by ship if the number were NCC-1701. I must admit that isn't very likely.

I'd be more along your line of thinking if Billy Shater weren't looking for his bib/assistant every 5 seconds, and if Takai weren't looking for his "betroved", and if Nemoi knew what planet he was currently on....

Not to mention that the NCC-1701 died horribly, as did the rest (unfortunately) of it's proginy.

I, for one, am leaning in favor of Profressor Shorthair's "6 to 1.5 million" odds of finding a cache in pristine shape.

quote:

I'm going to Kyoto for a week - leaving on Saturday. In a city of one and a half million people, there are seven caches, and at least one of them seems to be missing. I'll grab as many as I can.

Well, I went after four and found two. After one of the non-finds, I went back to the hotel, read the logs, and knew exactly where it was. Unfortunately, I didn't have time for another trek up the mountain. But even my two DNFs led me to some really cool spots. And I was impressed with the number of people who were climbing Mt. Daimonji in the rain.

Things can be different in Europe too. During our trip to Germany last week, Hannah and I thought we would duck over into Belgium and nab a quick cache after a day in Aachen. We had very limited internet access while there but I got the coords for a couple of traditional caches that seemed straightforward and near the border. So off we head in the afternoon with nothing but the coords for two caches loaded in the GPS and a German road map that showed a tiny fraction of Belgium.

We ended up headed for the cache that seemed most accessable from where we entered Belgium. It was a traditional cache, small size, rated difficulty 1.0 / terrain 1.0. After circling the area on amazingly narrow roads, we finally arrived at the coords location which turned out to be a parking lot. No cache was around but we knew we were at the right place because the only English on the cache page mentioned a "fit-o-meter" which was also on a sign at the location. Baffled, we gave up and head back to Cologne.

After returning home, I ran the cache page through a Babelfish Dutch to English translation and although the cache was listed as a traditional cache, after reaching the parking lot, you then had to follow a series of trail markers to find the cache which was located a kilometer away, somewhere in the woods.

Moral - Study the cache pages before you leave home.

I have had limited success caching in the Caribbean. Mnay of the caches are of the vacation type; missing or in dire need of maintenance. Nothing quite like climbing to the highest point in Aruba the "Haystack", and search for nearly an hour through trash and cacti for a cache that is not there!

quote:

Originally posted by Ertman110:
I have had limited success caching in the Caribbean. Mnay of the caches are of the vacation type; missing or in dire need of maintenance. Nothing quite like climbing to the highest point in Aruba the "Haystack", and search for nearly an hour through trash and cacti for a cache that is not there!

I sure hope you posted "needs maintenance" logs on the ones that are in so-so shape and "needs archived" logs on the ones that are missing or are in very bad shape. "Neds archived" logs will bring the appropriate cache pages to the attention of the volunteer reviewer handling the area, which will enable the reviewer to contact the cache owners and press for action.