No trip away from home is complete without looking for a geocache. According to geocaching.com, there are 130 in the State of Sao Paulo and several within a few miles of the hotel. The one I set out to find is called A Grande Árvore – São José dos Campos and it was less than a mile from the hotel — the way the crow flies. If you are not familiar with the area and don’t have good street-level maps, things can be tricky. There might be a river with no bridge between you and the destination.
I headed out from the hotel with the geocaching app on the iPhone. The walk turned out to be several miles including crossing a six-lane highway and walking through a number of neighborhoods that may have been dangerous. I finally turned a corner and immediately knew that the big beautiful tree a couple of blocks away was the spot. Was the cache hidden up in the branches of the tree? Unfortunately, the description and the hint were in Portugese and the passersby did not speak English. I was ready to give up when an elderly couple came by. They interpreted the hint on the iPhone. It said the cache was hidden among the rocks at the base of the tree on the southwest side. I switched over to the iPhone’s compass and then went to the spot. The huge roots of the tree with small rocks scattered at the base made an excellent hiding place, but alas I could find nothing.
I have had disappointments in not finding cleverly hidden caches before, but have found 102 of them since 2003. It was very frustrating to not find this one – I know I was at the right spot. There was a bottle of water where the hint said the cache should be. It is possible I was inept at finding it but I had a suspicion that the cache had been stolen. I posted a DNF (did not find) a geocaching.com. The next day the owner of the cache posted something in Portugese. I don’t know what it said but the symbol used and the line through the cache name indicated that “This cache is temporarily unavailable”. That is code for “stolen”. I could not help but wonder if any government aviation entities were involved in this expedition. The good news is that I got a lot of exercise.
At dinner Bill, Mark and I discussed flight planning and how the day would go on Monday (Day 8). It was time for luck to turn our way. Stay tuned.