About a year ago I started a new sport – Paragliding. For this I “needed”, amongst other very expensive equipment, a GPS unit. I soon realized that I was not using the GPS unit to its “full capacity” and stumbled upon a new way to use the GPSr – geocaching. I read all about it, joined the community and before the week was over I logged my first find. Hook, line and sinker! Very soon all the local caches was depleted and I started to place a couple of my own, finding some a bit further from home, contacting other geocachers, introducing caching to my friends and spending way too much time on the Web and in the forums. Then I discovered travel bugs.

Initially I bought two bugs and sent them off into the world, complete with a mission and high hopes for my little African travel bugs. TBs soon became my obsession and I started to actively search and find those caches hosting TBs. Again to depletion. Somewhere in November 2004, I read a thread about two racing TBs, and the idea to have a South African TB Race was born.

I decided to call it The South African 2005 TB Race to Cape Town. A set of rules was decided on, local cachers were contacted to find participants, sponsors were contacted and The Race started officially on the 1st January, 2005. The object of The Race is to get your TB to move from the start cache to the final cache, visiting as many caches on the way within a one-year period. These two caches are 1308.6km (813.1mi) apart. The Race is set up in such a way that the more caches a TB visit, provided it reaches the final cache within the time constraints, the better the chances of winning The Race are. On the other hand, should a TB leave the borders of South Africa and travel a substantial distance further than the rest of the participants (and reach the final cache) chances of winning The Race becomes less.

Updates are regularly done and published on my home page as well as in the South African forum. South African cachers are really playing along well and to date there are eight participating TBs, 18 cachers have assisted participating TBs and 31 (unique) caches have been visited. More information on participants and their owners, current whereabouts, race rankings and race statistics can be found on the update page.

The South African TB Race, a special event cache for the owners of participating TBs, was organized for the start of The Race. With the help of local cachers most of the TBs were pushed out of the starting blocks, as the start cache is somewhat remote and involve some serious climbing. All the participants have left the start cache and visited at least two caches, one TB has almost finished The Race at the time of writing the article!

It has been a blast watching the participants move and I cannot wait to see each TBs next move and the cacher assisting the TB on the next leg of the race. It is really interesting to see new caching friendships develop, the behind the scenes lobbying, and general interest the race has sparked in the South African Geocaching community. I have received numerous enquiries from the greater geocaching community to make this an annual race and to allow “foreign” entries as well. All I can say at this time is: Keep your ears to the ground ... Wishing all participating TBs and their owners the best of luck in The Race.