Several months later than planned, we finally managed to get several days off and booked a vacation to Texel. We found a nice hotel near the small village of De Koog, and packed our bags, scope, binoculars and Garmin GPS.

We had done our homework and printed the information of 50 geocaches hidden on the Island. We intended to find as many as possible, combined with sightseeing and birdwatching. It turned out to be an excellent combination: most caches were hidden near points of interest or close to bird spotting huts.

Our first choice was a short multi cache, which meant we had to do a bit of hiking and find a couple of clues on the way. We had lovely weather, so this wasn’t a chore at all! We had a beautiful hike through the dunes and ended up near the lighhouse.

We found the cache without trouble and hiked back along the beach to the car park. It would be the first of a grand total of 33 caches we managed to find.

In the evening we had dinner at a Indian Restaurant, enjoying a punjab menu with several Tandoori dishes, some sweeter curries and lovely coconut flavored Nan bread to the side. Alex enjoyed the Kingfisher beers and I tossed my diet out long enough to indulge in several glasses of wine.

The next day, we got up early to enjoy the breakfast buffet and head out for a second day of geocaching. The makers of the caches apparently knew the Island well and had left a couple of puzzles here and there, mainly: how to get to the caches without being blocked by water, dunes or dikes. Once we had to approach from the far side and use a “trek pond” to cross the water.

We mostly enjoyed the caches where we had to walk a bit first and discover pretty sights along the way.
Where oh where, would the cache be hidden? A couple of options: the information board, the little bridge and that iron thingy. Our Garmin GPS tracker was spot on and guided us unerringly within 1 meter of the cache hiding place.

After a quick search, we found the small container cleverly hidden:

Yep, there! Found it! Time to write our names on the log inside and be on our way.

More pretty pictures and stories of victorious finds coming soon! Stay tuned!

Emboldened by recent successes, Team Mardya thought the time fit for our first four star cache. We chose a recently added series by Team Casco, conveniently placed in our home town. This series consisted of four traditionals and a mystery bonus cache aptly named: Kleurenblind, which translates to “Color Blind”. The traditionals were marked as fairly easy so we assumed (quite wrongly) that the bonus shouldn’t be too hard to solve either.

The KNMI had promised gorgeous weather, so today should be the day for our first four star mystery! We decided to pick all five caches in one go, and do this “Rondje De Maten” by bicycle.

“De Maten” is the largest residential area in Apeldoorn, with approximately 30,000 people. Despite its size and amount of people living here, it is still a very green area, with parks and plenty opportunities for walking and cycling.

It took us little over an hour to find the first four caches:

Blue, Red, Green and Black and we confidently calculated the coordinates of the bonus cache. (register for free at www.geocaching.com to view the links)

Train Station “De Maten”, by Gemeente Apeldoorn

So close to our goal, we set course towards the final destination where this bonus cache should easily yield to our genius! We arrived and found the location within several minutes, after which reality came visiting quite cruelly…  Remember the bonus was a mystery cache? Well, we had thought we had gathered the correct information from the first four caches, but when faced with the color coding to solve the combination for the number lock, it turned out we had overlooked a small but significant detail: color blind indeed.

Slightly disappointed but determined to solve this puzzle, we went home where we found inspiration for attempt no. 2. Wrong again! Only this time, the cache-owner was nearby and came over, rubbing his hands in glee at finding another team falling for the ingenious mystery. With his help,  we broke the code on our second try, and concluded a superb day of cycling with the find of five caches. YAY us!