GCZA01

The GCZA01 geocache (GC163) was placed on 14 January 2001 in the North West province of South Africa, on the farm of a friend of its owner. Its name means something real: ZA for South Africa, 01 because it was the first in the country, and it is the 163rd in the world, eight months after the first geocache placed by Dave Ulmer in Oregon, in the United States.

GPSFrodo had discovered the game through a Usenet message announcing Ulmer's cache. He first approached the botanical gardens of Pretoria, without success: try explaining a GPS treasure hunt to an administrator in 2001... A friend's farm was the only place where he could get permission. There were neither rules nor reviewers back then: you declared your cache, and that was that. In the transparent Tupperware box marked GPS Stash, he had put blank CDs, a Tom Clancy novel, a notebook, a welcome letter and a watch in the colours of Navision, the Danish software company he worked for - bought on purpose because he was certain there was no second one in the country.

Three days later, Jors signed the one and only find of its history: he took the watch, left a road map and promised to hide one himself. On 6 February, GPSFrodo came back to the spot: everything had gone, box included. Three weeks of existence. Four days after it, Professor Charles Merry placed Sentinel View (GC185), today the oldest active cache in South Africa, with its original logbook.

Jors kept his word in May 2009 with GCZA01.2, placed as close to the original as the fences allow, and deliberately discreet so as to last longer than it did. As for the Navision watch, it became a trackable that can be discovered at South African events.