A couple time a year we visit our family in the Netherlands. This time we took the time to visit friends in Belgium. After a chatting and eating Sushi we wanted to learn more about GeoCaching. Especially Sander was interest by this modern  treasure hunting game.

Phildie were recently introduced to geocaching by the Family Schagen and their post on Facebook made us curious about it. Geocaching is searching for hidden items by using GPS-coordinates. Sometimes the coordinates are clear some times the coordinates can be obtained by solving a riddle and/or getting answer on question on several locations. If you find a geocache you need to leave an entry in the log-book available inside it. More information can be found onwww.geocaching.com which is also the website were all the geocache location around the world are listed. To view them a free membership is necessary.

After a brief introduction we decided to get some caches in Antwerpen. The weather wasn’t really nice but Geocaching can be done by car. The first 7 caches where selected byPhildie since they already knew them. We found most of the caches pretty fast. Except for one which was unable to get because of a police car near the location.

Then Phil decided to push us to the limit and asked us to help them solve a cache called the ‘Veronica’. This cache has a 3* difficulty level and they didn’t found it after 2 visits.  If we found it we would earn a Starbucks! We went there and Sander instantly found it. Then we headed to the 2nd cash from 3* which was created by the same maker as the ‘Veronica’. This one was harder but not because of where it was hidden but because it was really difficult to get to the log-book. After logging it we decided it to be the last cache of the day.

Photo: phildie.skyblogs.be

Our first Dutch geocache was less then 500 meter away from the place where I’ve lived for almost 13 years. This one was found by Danielle. On the way back home to Germany we found another geocache which was visited by a Travel-Bug. A Travel-Bug is an item with a goal. The goal of this bug was traveling as far as possible. According to the log-entries on the homepage of this Travel-Bug it started traveling in 2002 and already travelled more then 50.000 kilometer. We took it with us and now we need to find a new Geocache for this ‘Rubber Ducky’ so he can travel even further.

The first German geocache we found a couple hours later. This was a so called ‘Nano’. This has to do with the size of a cache. A ‘Nano’ is the smallest, but this one isn’t officially listed on geocaching and is included in the ‘Micro’ category.

Micro: (35 mm film canister or smaller)

Small (sandwich-sized plastic container or similar)

Regular (plastic container can about the size of a shoebox)

Large (20 L bucket or larger)

The first one in our hometown was a Micro and easy to find.

I’m already curious about the next cache. Maybe it will be a so called TB-Hotel so the Travel-Bug we’ve found can continue his trip.

When we moved from the Netherlands to Germany back in 2008 we needed a car. We decided that a 3-year leasing car would be the best for us since the German Adventure should last only 3 years. We picked out a silver Opel Astra GTC Innovation.

The car was alright but a little bit too small for us. We where used to our bigger Opel Astra Caravan Business Edition we had in the Netherlands. That made us looking for a bigger car. The first choice was the new Opel Astra Sports Tourer but after checking it out it seemed smaller. Mainly because the Sports Tourer aspect which made the car better looking but the space was limited because of that.

That made us look for a bigger class of cars. The Volkswagen Passat and the Opel Insignia. We went to several Car dealers to have a more detailed look at both. And the modern design of the Opel Insignia made it our favorite. After a more detaield selection we picked out the following version:

Opel Insignia Sports Tourer Innovation 2.0 CDTI ECOflex

Color: Graphite black

Interior: Morrocana-Ribbon Beige