This week a family from Melbourne, Australia were here in Barga on a serious geocaching mission, having already found geocaching boxes in Vietnam and in Rome.
Ellen Bland and her father, Ian came into the barganews office this afternoon to recount their impressions of Barga, of geocaching in general and their view of the cultural geocaching boxes that they have already discovered in this area.
Cultural Geocaching as a “tourism resource” is definitely making itself felt in this area.
So just what is inside the cultural geocache boxes?
The video above should go some way to explaining
GEOCACHING is an outdoor recreational activity, in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches” or “caches”, anywhere in the world.
A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook where the geocacher enters the date they found it and signs it with their established code name. After signing into the log, the cache must be placed back exactly where the person found it. Larger containers such as plastic storage containers (Tupperware or similar) or ammunition boxes can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value.
The geocaches of Barga are somewhat different as they in fact do contain objects of value.
There are 20 cultural geocaches hidden in and around the medieval walled city of Barga (LU) in Tuscany.
The caches contain signed original artworks, drawings, charcoal drawings, prints and etchings by 40 artists working in this area.
There are also mini poems and short stories in Italian and Latin
Professional musicians have prepared a series of cards containing QR codes which when scanned by smart phones will play music specially written for the project. The music includes classic, jazz, piano, tango, rock and folk.
The project is an attempt to “raise the bar” on the level of objects which can be found and exchanged in geocaches.
We hope that the people who find these objects will enjoy them as much as we have in preparing them. (the map can be found here)
Nicola Salotti talking about his participation in the geocaching project
Marco Poma talking about his participation in the geocaching project
Andrea Guzzoletti talking about his participation in the geocaching project
Nick Kraczyna talking about his participation in the geocaching project
Rory Wilmer talking about his participation in the geocaching project