We are
\nall hardwired to be intrigued by mysteries. Each and every one of us has at
\nleast once taken up the challenge to solve a mystery, a riddle, a puzzle, an
\nenigma. That explains why some 2 million people from around the world got
\nthemselves entangled in a treasure hunt type of game, or geocaching, as it is
\nknown worldwide. The treasure is a hidden box, which has some sort of story to
\ntell. The box contains all kinds of objects, selected by the person who hid the
\nbox, and, of course, limited by the size of the box. You can find a piece of a
\nbroader puzzle in the box, which signals that there are other boxes for you to
\nfind. And the finder is allowed to take something out of the box, provided he
\nreplaces that item with something else, also scribbling in the little notebook
\nlying in the box that he found it, and jotting down his own impressions on that
\nas well. Eventually the box tells the story of the place it was hidden in and
\nof the people who come across it. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Speaking about the history of the game and about how
\nyou end up being a passionate geocacher, here is Alexandru Purice also known as
\nMioritics in the geocachers’ community:<\/p>\n
The game started in 2000, when access to satellites around the
\nglobe became public. It first started in the USA, where an aficionado took the
\ndecision to hide a box in a forest and post its coordinates on a site, also
\ninviting his friends to look for it. It was a kind of treasure hunt, basically.
\nHis friends got themselves going, took the coordinates, used GPS tracking
\nsignals to find the coordinates, they liked the idea and from there the game
\nexpanded a lot, with almost 7 million boxes ready to be found around the world,
\nat the moment, with more than 2 million active gamers.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We asked Mioritics how
\nhe into the game:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
I for one found out about the game about 10 years ago, when I was
\nin Venice with a friend and he said how about discovering some boxes, the two
\nof us. He told me a little bit about the game and took me somewhere showing me
\nwhat it was all about, namely that a series of GPS coordinates are posted on a
\nsite, indicating where the box is. As a user, you transfer the information on
\nyour mobile phone or on any device with GPS tracking, and then you go outdoors,
\nas that is the key purpose of the game, to get you out of the house, looking
\nfor these treasures. So after I had learned about all this, I started
\ndiscovering places I never knew existed. One of the benefits of the game is
\nthat it encourages users to place the boxes in the region they live in. You
\ncannot place boxes at more than 200 kilometres from the place you live, so each
\nuser shows the area to the others through their own eyes. That’s how you get to
\ndiscover areas you would have never found otherwise.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Alex found more than 4,000
\nboxes, and in his pursuits he travelled from Peru to Vietnam. But as he told
\nus, he found out new things about Bucharest as well, in search of the hidden
\ntreasures. And in 2012, gamers set up an organization. With details on that,
\nhere is Alex Purice:<\/p>\n
In Romania, some of us who love
\nthe game have created an association and an NGO. We mainly set up that
\nassociation so that we can have sponsors in of events and run small-scale
\nprojects, the most recent of which addresses the ‘Doing school differently’
\nprogram, as we think that these days children spend most of their time in front
\nof the computer screen and barely spend time outdoors. We try to come up with a
\nseries of projects, under the ‘Doing school differently’ program, and to create
\ninstructive treasure-hunting games for children who go to the park or in
\ndowntown Bucharest.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
How can one join this community? Alex Purice
\ntold us:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
It’s quite simple. Those
\ninterested should access ‘Geocaching.com’, open a user account, which offers
\nunrestricted access to the database. If you use a smart phone, you can download
\nthe application and then discover various interesting places across the country.
\nThis is how I discovered breathtakingly beautiful landscapes. I’ve been to
\nGod’s Bridge in Mehedinti, to Racosi, near Brasov, where I visited a quarry in
\nan extinct volcano, or to the Saxon medieval citadels, the Danube Delta, that I
\nmight have never visited otherwise. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
By discovering the boxes hidden by others, you
\nalso find out their story, Alex Purice ,a.k.a. Mioritics, explained to us why
\nsomebody would choose to join the game: <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
It’s worth playing because you discover the
\nworld around through the eyes of other people and find places you have never
\nthought of. I like travelling a lot and during my trips I look for geocaches or
\nboxes hidden in the respective areas, because they have always enabled me to
\ndiscover interesting areas. Practically, each box has a web page, where the
\nperson who hides the box offers a description and explains why the box is
\ninteresting. The finder reads the description, browses the photos, takes a look
\nat what other users have written. These boxes contain small notes, pieces of
\npaper on which you can leave messages, saying that you found the box. It is
\nalso recommended to leave your impressions on the website, too. This way, other
\npeople can read your comments on a place and make a decision whether it is
\nworth visiting or not. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And when it comes to games, the little ones can
\nalso enjoy them: <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
I have small kids and every
\ntime they are thrilled to go and search for something, because the boxes are of
\nvarious sizes, from tiny ones, the size of a finger nail to huge, one cubic
\nmeter boxes. They contain all sorts of toys as well. The whole idea of the game
\nis to take something out of the box and to put something else inside. And this
\nwas an excellent opportunity to persuade my kids to give away something. We
\nused to search for boxes, they found small items inside which they liked a lot,
\nthey took something there in exchange.
\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The invitation to take part
\nin the game has been extended. You can discover new things or discover a new
\nperspective by looking at the world through the geocatchers’ eyes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some 2 million people around the world have got themselves entangled in a treasure hunt type of game, or geocaching as it is known worldwide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":135148,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42520],"tags":[43078],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-135147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inside-romania","tag-geocatching"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n