Broccili
Bronze Cacher
Vehicle TB212QR "Powerstroke"
Posts: 67
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Post by Broccili on Jan 27, 2009 21:35:35 GMT -9
Little bit backwards... some Alaskan's leaving on a Cruise. My wife and son are going on a trip together for Spring Break 09. The youngin likes geocaching, and is ok with the GPS. The misses isn't sure how to turn on the GPS, but is great at finding the hides when we get to the terminal zone. I'm hoping to set them up with a couple of simple, relatively quick and easy caches on their trip (Cabo, Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan). They are not avid cachers, so one or two for the day would be plenty, close to the port would be perfect. I found this 'list' on the Groundspeak forums... any input would be greatly appreciated! - Cabo San Lucas
No Comprende Playa Del Amor
- Puerto Vallarta
Cruisers Cache Puerto Virtuallarta
- Mazatlan
Nothing looks 'easy' to get to in Mazatlan
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Post by NorthWes on Jan 30, 2009 19:13:44 GMT -9
Here’s some caches I did on a recent (Jan 17-24 2009) cruise aboard the Sapphire Princess to Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, & Cabo San Lucas. I’ve got some opinions (of course - and remember these are just MY impressions) about cruise caching, Mexico in general, and these ports in particular that I’ll share. You can jump to the caches I’ve mentioned by clicking on the cache names. In the interest of keeping this manageable, I’m going to put each cruise port in a separate post, including San Pedro (the embarkation point for Princess, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian Cruises out of LA).
Having a GPS aboard a cruise ship is fun. You can take it topside and get a ‘position report’ whenever you want to know where you are, how fast you’re going, and how far away everything else is relative to you. I usually marked the ship’s position at 7am (morning walk topside), 4pm (afternoon walk topside), and just before bed when we were at sea. Great for the memories on the map, and it certainly attracts interest from fellow cruisers! Geocaching ashore for me meant having a reason to visit a specific location, and made my wife happy to have a guided walk (she hates – despises, even – shopping). Plus – I was able to indulge myself in caches where the hide was chosen for its splendid views rather than its accessibility to the cruise ship (meaning – midtown micros abounding in muggles). I like to build my find count like anyone else, but when I'm on vacation I really like to spend my time in special places unique to where I'm visiting.
Carry US dollars – lots and lots of single dollar bills – for spending on things like taxi fare etc off ship. Get the cash in advance too – the bills from the purser’s office aboard ship are uncirculated (part of the war on drugs – no prior traces of ‘use’ on the new money), and they stick to each other embarrassingly well. I can’t emphasize this enough – unless you’re going to shop in a cruise-line recommended store, leave your credit cards aboard ship and carry only cash in ones (LOTS OF ONES) and fives (with a few twenties along for the big stuff like group cab fare or meals in restaurant). All you need getting off ship is the cruise ship’s issued room key card and a drivers license or some other ‘government photo ID’. You don’t want to lose your passport ashore, and it’s not needed to get on and off ship. Stay out of bars & questionable company and you’ll stay out of trouble…
Mexico is generating lots of rumblings about crime. There’s good reason for that. Narcoterrorism (drug gang operations financed by a seemingly endless supply of cash from sales in the USA) is tearing the country apart and manifesting itself in an increase in street crime, especially along and across our nation’s southern land border. It’s made for great sound bites in the media – ‘Mexico is about to implode,’ one headline read. Truth is, Mexico’s arguably the most important foreign partner of the United States. The United States is unarguably the most important foreign partner for Mexico. Mexico supplies a third of our imported oil. We account for 47% of all foreign direct investment in Mexico. 18,000 Mexican companies have US investment. 50% of their imports come from the US. 82% of their exports go to the US. Mexico and its people are a joy to visit - the population is extremely hard working, humble, gracious, spiritually devout, patriotic, and family oriented. The culture and art are rich and fiercely admired by the people, and they’ll tell you all about it if you’re humble enough to talk with them. It’s just tough to encounter ‘real people’ in Mexico in the luxury shopping zones, but we had a great time meeting people while geocaching. Be prepared, however, to see far more police of various sorts than you’ll ever see in Alaska – you’re almost never out of sight of them in downtown areas, port zones, and visitor areas. And – the Mexican Navy’s Marines provide armed security for the immediate port area – in full combat gear. Finally – outside of the ‘gringo visitor zones’ be prepared for a country that doesn’t look like suburban middle-class USA – it’s Mexico. Get into contact with Mexico's people away from the 'golden zones' and learn a little bit of flavor about our most important neighbor country.
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Post by NorthWes on Jan 30, 2009 19:15:52 GMT -9
San Pedro (Los Angeles) CA – We traveled into CA a day and a half early, spending two nights at the relatively expensive Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown San Pedro before departure. It was worth it – super nice hotel with the best staff, centrally located, great benchmarking in the area (on foot!), and the hotel has a free shuttle to the cruise terminal. Plus – the only rental car agency in the area is right next door (Enterprise). We took the PrimeTime shuttle from the airport to our hotel, and collapsed into a welcome slumber after the longish flight down from Anchorage. Next day we were scheduled to visit Catalina Island, but we scratched that plan in favor of sleeping in, renting a car, and geocaching the Palos Verde península (did I tell you how much I love my wife?). Our friends flew in that second night and we met them for breakfast before departure to the terminal at around noon. The Palos Verde península is an awesome place – very slow pace (for LA) and excellent parks. Nice geocaches & lots & lots of benchmarks, as well as a couple of really good (& simple) earthcaches (get an earthcache every time you’re in a new state or country if you at all can – it’s needed for your earthcache masters work). As a tip, if you fly into LA try and get into Long Beach airport. Closer to the cruise ship terminal, and this hotel would’ve picked us up for free there. I don’t want to recommend any specific caches in San Pedro – there’s some listed on my profile and many more I wish I’d had time for. This was my second caching run across the area, and I really like the place. We finished our cruise by spending the Saturday night back in San Pedro before returning home to Alaska, for a total of ten days on the road.
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Post by NorthWes on Jan 30, 2009 19:36:55 GMT -9
Puerto Vallarta (PV) – there are two caches relatively close to the cruise ship dock gate ( N20 39.206 W105 14.583) named Cruisers' Cache (CC) and Puerto Vallarta Nano (PVN). I attempted PVN while waiting to depart on a Whale Photo Safari (which was worth every dime spent) and found myself being directly watched by two businesses’ security guards, two municipal policemen, and two state policemen. Uncomfortable, I passed on the close search and left. I didn’t attempt CC as it looked to be in the proximity of the WalMart / Sams Club (visible from the cruise ship) and the security/police flocking that area. I didn’t travel to Mexico to do micros in a WalMart parking lot – a personal thing. However, both caches appear to be active, and one seems to allow logging finds without signing the log (not a real find in my book). Following the Whale Photo Safari’s four-hour boat ride, my companions and I grabbed a cab from the cruise ship dock area and headed down to old town PV ($4 per person plus tip, one way). We asked the cab driver to take us to the old cathedral (very photogenic & clean area) which is just two blocks off the ‘Malecon’ – the waterfront pedestrian walkway. We looked at the cathedral, strolled downhill to the waterfront (beach/Malecon), turned right, walked past the dolphin statue (the Malecon has bronze statues about every 100 yards!) and walked another block to the mermaid statues which constitute the virtual Puerto Virtuallarta (which requires a photo of the cacher on site to log as a find). We shopped for silver in the store right across the street from the statue, then walked back up to the cathedral where our cabbie had graciously waited for us (we agreed on a one-hour visit – he chatted with his friends at a little sidewalk café while we did our tourist stuff) and were back at the cruise ship within two hours of first grabbing the cab, for a total hit of $40 in cab fare and tips for a party of four. Kind of spendy but worth it if you want to see the original & ‘real’ PV versus the gringo PV – hands down, it was a lot more fun than skulking under the eyes of layers of armed and suspicious law enforcement persons in a place that looked more like Wasilla on a hot day than Mexico.
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Post by NorthWes on Jan 30, 2009 19:48:11 GMT -9
Mazatlan has no caches within immediate proximity of the cruise dock (secure area gate at about N23 11.597 W106 24.953), but there are two fabulous caches nearby: Canada Eh? (CE) and Mazatlan Stone (MS). Both are within a mile and a half of where the ship docks, as the pelicans fly. CE is located at the midpoint of the .6 mile long trail winding to the top of ‘El Faro’ – a prominent hill and nature preserve crowned with a lighthouse, on the northwest side of the harbor entrance. The trailhead is at about N23 10.866 W106 25.555. By Alaskan standards it’s an excellent ‘trail’, with a clean hard surface and stairs along most of its length – just stay off the ‘short cuts’. We took an open-air cab for $2 each from the cruise ship for the 1.2 mile ride to the trailhead. The CE cache is hidden right on the trail itself on a switchback – a very nice cache with a small container suitable for geocoins, swag, etc – I posted a photo on my cache log. The trail was a delight, with stunning views, interesting geological strata and subtropical vegetation – as well as feral cats – along most of its length. The trailhead is located near the sewage treatment plant, which is the only negative attribute to this cache hunt – but you leave that behind in moments after you begin walking. Following the hike up and down ‘El Faro’ we splurged on another $2 each cab fare for the very short ride to the Water Taxi dock (turnoff from main road to dock at N23 11.304 W106 25.137), where another $2 each secured us round-trip water taxi tickets over to Stone Island (just across the ship channel). A short walk down the lovely beach brought us to a beachside ‘restaurant’ named “Victor’s” where the MS cache is hidden on the premises (and OK bathrooms behind the place, much to my wife’s delight). The MS cache was ok, but the place is terrific. Our ship’s cruise director had brought his staff there on break – a sterling recommendation. We had the combination plate and there’s a photo of it on the cache page – exquisite. Mind you – I was wondering why I was buying food when I could get it free aboard ship, but it was worth twice times twice what we paid. After signing the log & dining we returned to the water taxi dock, where within minutes we were brought back to the ship’s side of the channel. A very short walk (perhaps 300 yards) later and we were inside the secure dockside shopping area and back to our ship. We avoided taking expensive taxis to the ‘Golden Zone’ (expensive new shopping district designed to strip cash from visitors, with no cache options), took a lovely walk on a great hill and a beach – and nabbed two easy caches as well!
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Post by NorthWes on Jan 30, 2009 20:07:35 GMT -9
Cabo San Lucas presented challenges. It’s a beautiful place, with a couple of terrific options for snorkeling: Playa Del Amor – (Lovers Beach, and also the name of the cache I recommend highly here) – very busy with boat traffic – and Bahia Santa Maria – a bit of a drive north of the harbor. However, the ships are too big to dock. This means you must take a ‘tender’ to & from shore. Add that to a short stay (Princess cruises only are in port long enough to give you an effective stay of just 6 hours – ending at 1:30pm), and it’s not a good place to try and get too far away from the harbor. The harbor area has luxury shopping opportunities (they actually advertise it as an ‘extreme sport’ down there…), and the town’s primarily a resort mecca for outsiders. There are some caches relatively close to the tender dock (another middle-of-the-muggle cache, and one by frostbiteak with a gnarly terrain rating), but I was interested in only one cache here – Playa Del Amor (PDA). It requires a water taxi ride from the harbor (costs $1 to enter the secure harbor area for small boats, and $8-$12 each for the taxi ride, which includes a short tour around the fabulous rock formations at Los Arcos). Make sure you arrange a firm time to be picked up, and know your water taxi’s boat name! The cruise ship has to steam at a 25% faster speed from Cabo to be back in LA on time, so it won’t wait for late passengers! Don’t get picked up from Lovers Beach any later than ninety minutes before your boarding deadline – you’ll need that time for a cushion and for standing in line to get aboard the tenders. Once you’re on the beach at Playa Del Amor, the cache requires you to walk through the sandy opening to the Pacific Side of the peninsula – about a ten minute stroll. I think the Pacific Side’s much prettier (and has far less people on it). Don’t swim on the Pacific side – the surf is booming and there’s a rip. The cache requires a short scramble up a gravelly gully to access the hide area. I wore a pair of Crocs and went very slowly and carefully (hey – I’m 51 now), and it only took me ten minutes to reach the spot. It’s not at all difficult, the coordinates were within 12’ when I was there, and you don’t need to leave the gully to search. The cache page has a great photo to guide you into the correct gully (its been difficult for some cachers, based on the logs). I found the cache before I put my gear bag down! This lock’n’lock cache was placed by Seth! and Moun10Bike, so it’s kinda fun to have a link with them when you sign the log. More to the point, this cache has one of the most stunning views I’ve ever seen, without a doubt. I sat there soaking up the view for quite some time before signing the log etc. Descent took 15 minutes (I go slower downhill, so that I don’t end up going faster by mistake…). My wife and I lounged on this side of the beach area until fifteen minutes before pickup, and then we wandered back to where the boat had dropped us off to wait for our ride. Never went into a store here, but our friends claimed it was more expensive than Anchorage! We rate the three hours spent on the Playa Del Amor beach as our best time off the ship on the whole cruise (well – the whale safari was good too – but different kind of good - and not at all restful as lounging on a nearly deserted beach).
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Post by NorthWes on Jan 30, 2009 20:13:44 GMT -9
So - there's my impressions. Glad to share any files & hints to help the trip go smoother... we had a blast! Puerto Virtuallarta - note the cool Maxpedition Gear Bag (thanks to Flyrfn!) Canada Eh? - a well-done cache on a nature preserve in Mazatlan... Mazatlan Stone - the cache log and an Alaska Geocoin... Mazatlan Stone - the dinner at Victor's - what a combo platter! Playa Del Amor - cache with my Alaska Geocoin... and the Pacific Ocean!
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Post by ladybugkids on Feb 4, 2009 6:55:51 GMT -9
Thanks, NorthWes! We'll be visiting Mazatlan in March and had all fourteen caches in the area loaded into a PQ. I'm assuming the "$" is for dollar and not peso even though Mexico uses the "$" for pesos. Interesting how even so far south of the border the dollar still rules, even in these lousy economic times. Just goes to show all things are relative!
For those wondering how to easily load (or just view) caches in a foreign land, follow these easy steps:
1. Buy a "Premium" geocaching.com membership for $3/month or $30/year if you want to download a pocket query to manipulate in GSAK, EasyGPS, or another application, for easy loading into your GPS. This step isn't necessary, but it's a good way to support the gc.com listing service and saves the pain a printing cache pages and manually entering coordinates (which opens the possibility of data entry error).
2. Get starting coordinates for your destination using GoogleEarth or other mapping software. For Mazatlan, I used N 23° 13.000 W 106° 26.000 as a desired center point since we'll be staying on the north end of the strand.
3. Log on to your geocaching.com account, click on "My Account" then "Build Pocket Queries" (found along the right hand side of the page, and then "create a new query."
4. Work your way through the "Pocket Query" menu choosing the options for the types of caches you wish to seek. I recommend NOT checking the day of the week until after the next step because you are allowed only five PQs a day and sometimes you can enter search criteria that come up with an empty PQ or a PQ that is larger than you want.
5. Click on "preview the search" at the top of the page. This gives me a list of eighteen caches in the area, including four that had been posted since the last time I looked. Yippee!
6. If you like the list, click your browser's back button (and then, sometimes refresh the page) to return to the Pocket Query menu. Check the day of the week and "submit information" at the bottom of the page. Your PQ will run and be e-mailed to the e-mail account you use for geocaching.com and be saved on your "My Pocket Queries" page.
7. If you don't like the list, click your brower's back button (and then, sometimes refresh the page), and edit your filter choices repeating steps 4 and 5.
If you don't want to create a PQ or buy a Premium membership, then follow these steps:
1. Log into geocaching.com and click on "Hide and Seek" a cache. Enter the coordinates into "Latitude Longitude" search fields about halfway down the page. I used "30" miles as a search radius because I doubt we'll be going very far afield.
2. This gives me a list of eighteen caches in the area, including four that had been posted since the last time I looked. Yippee!
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powmia
Silver Cacher
Caches Found/Hidden xxxx/x
Posts: 208
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Post by powmia on Feb 4, 2009 20:39:56 GMT -9
"For those wondering how to easily load (or just view) caches in a foreign land, follow these easy steps:"
I am attempting to find caches from Argentina to Mexico via the west side of the continent for my trip. I will use some of the tips LBK mentioned and see how I fare.
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Post by ladybugkids on Feb 4, 2009 22:38:07 GMT -9
"For those wondering how to easily load (or just view) caches in a foreign land, follow these easy steps:" I am attempting to find caches from Argentina to Mexico via the west side of the continent for my trip. I will use some of the tips LBK mentioned and see how I fare. You might want to try the Caches Along a Route feature for that effort. I've used it for routes in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and France, but haven't tried it for Mexico and South America.
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Post by ladybugkids on Mar 16, 2009 21:05:02 GMT -9
Mazatlan We avoided taking expensive taxis to the ‘Golden Zone’ (expensive new shopping district designed to strip cash from visitors, with no cache options), took a lovely walk on a great hill and a beach – and nabbed two easy caches as well! Mazatlan transportation note: The open air pulmanias are an affordable way to get around Mazatlan. They seat four and we never paid more than 80 pesos (~$6) for a ride for the entire family when transiting from north to south across Mazatlan and vice versa. They run all over town and even my daughters could flag down an empty one. The drivers will take dollars or pesos, but since we were in town for a week, I pulled pesos from the local ATM and used them. The ATM exchange rate was about 14:1, while the taxi drivers and vendors were generally giving only 10:1 (pesos:dollars). We followed NorthWes' footsteps last week to "Mazatlan Stone" and "Canada Eh!" and agree with his assessment of their great locations. I highly recommend the smoked fish lunch at Victor's where the Mazatlan Stone cache is located. Two other caches of note that are definitely worth visiting are Above the Beach and Lambchop 4.Above the Beach may be accessed from the Pueblo Bonito Emerald Bay resort by walking along a beach with lots of tide pools and sea birds and then taking a walk along a bluff above the bay. Lambchop 4 may be accessed by renting a kayak or chartering a boat to take you to Isla de las Aves (Bird Island) where there is also excellent snorkling. Lambchop 4 was my favorite cache of the trip because of the kayaking adventure of crossing a Pacific Ocean channel in a kayak (albeit, only about 1/2 mile wide) and the overall excellence of the location. I posted several photos with each of our logs for the four caches mentioned by name is this posting. There are also several urban micro hides scattered around Mazatlan, but many have gone missing recently, so be certain to update your PQ when given the opportunity, or you could find yourself burning vacation time looking for something that isnt' there. That happened to us on four of the twelve caches we search for last week. We spent eight days in Mazatlan and traversed it from north to south and east to west several times. At no time did we ever feel threatened, but rather, we felt welcomed by the local people wherever we went. The food was great, the facilities clean (inside and outside the tourist zones), and the local people where cheerful and extremely hard working. My oldest daughter celebrated a birthday while we were in Mazatlan and with local knowledge shared by the resort concierge, a custom birthday cake was delivered to the our room for 150 pesos (~$14). Given the choice of Hawaii or Mexico for our next trip, we'll choose Mexico even though it's a longer flight. The US dollar still exchages well, the people are much more friendly (never got the stink-eye from the locals like we have in the islands), and actually "felt" safer regardless of where we went. Admittedly, we were rather boring and didn't party until dawn in out of the way places, but we decided to leave that to all the college kids down there for Spring Break.
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