The Ultimate Throwdown – 5,800 KM Away From Home
GC3ND9R appeared to be in a spot that would be part of my tour. I added the cache to my watchlist to make sure it was still in good shape before I left. After a few weeks, I read GLA58R7C from the owner and it seemed that the cache had gone missing. I did not want to lose the opportunity to snag a cache while in another country.
I contacted the owner and asked him if he wanted me to replace the cache. After a few emails back and forth we worked out the details. I purchased a container from Cachemporium that would work just fine. I got all the way to the Galapagos Islands and was on my way to Post Office Bay when I realized that my GPS was missing. It hadn’t clipped properly to my pants and ended up falling into the ocean. I was upset about losing the GPS but I didn’t let it hamper the trip.
I got to the area and looked for his fake rock cache and did not find any traces of what the previous finders had found. I used my iPhone to determine a set of coordinates and hid the new container. The image here shows the rocks where it was hidden. Can you spot the fake one? HINT: It’s small and in the sand.
When I got back to Moncton, I emailed the owner all of the specifics of the container, where I hid it, how to find it, and he was quite happy. He was also gracious enough to let me log it as a find. Turns out it wasn’t necessary as I was able to also log an earthcache: GC2Q6ME as a find as it was the last spot our tour group went snorkeling.
I had intended to try and snag the virtual cache located in Ecuador at the equator but was not able to as I had to return back to Moncton early for personal reasons.
Although I am not a fan of throw downs, this was a situation where I was very comfortable with leaving a new container in the location since I had already spoken to the cache owner about it. The reality is, it’s not a cache that gets found very often but there are a LOT of tour groups that go through this area so it’s not surprising that it gets muggled often. There were two other full tour groups that came through that area while I was there. The new location is not on the barrel or the rocks below it so hopefully that will help reduce the chances of it going missing.
Lastly, I travel quite a bit for my job but it is rare I ever check a bag on my flights. Because the flight to the islands was handled by my tour operator, I had no choice but to check my main bag with the airline. When I got to my cabin on the boat, my bag was waiting for me. I have seen plenty of bag tags on luggage before but this one stood out for me because the airport code shown on the tag said “GPS” which I thought was kind of funny. Turns out the Baltra Island airport located in the Galapagos islands has an airport code of GPS. I had to take a picture of it as it was unlikely I’d see that code again anytime soon.
Prior to this trip, the farthest distance I have ever traveled and left a throw down was PEI and that was on one of the raids me, Rev Slippery, Ron568, and paulandstacey did a few years back. I’m glad I don’t make a habit of it.
How about you? Have you done a throw down? What’s your take on this increasingly popular but controversial practice?
Replacing a cache for the owner, with the owner’s prior knowledge and permission is, in my eyes, not a throwdown but maintenance. If you leave one because you cannot find a certain cache, that is a throwdown.
Same thing happened in the DR (Punta Canada). I contacted the CO & with his permission, I placed a new cache. I don’t consider that a throw down. On another cache 3 kilometres from my resort, the cache was not visible & the hint said it was buried which is strictly against the rules, so Ii did a throw-down & logged it as a find. My log reflects that & has not been deleted!!