Homer's Travels: Camino de Santiago: Traveling Companions

Thursday, May 05, 2011

Camino de Santiago: Traveling Companions

A week or so back I went geocaching and I ended up picking up a geocoin ("Hazard - Perry County Tour III Geocoin").  This gave me an idea.

A few years back I bought four travel bug tags.  One was used for the "Polar Explorer" and another was used for the "Walking Sister".  (I mentioned these bugs before here and here.)  Sadly, both of these bugs have since vanished along with my first ("The Mind Wanders...").  One has been confirmed lost (The guy who lost it apologized) and the other two are in hands of people who don't respond to their email.

After picking up the geocoin, I decided to use the remaining two travel bug tags to make new bugs that I'll release in Spain.  Also, each time you buy a bug tag, you get a copy so I used the copy of the Walking Sister's tag to recreate it and it will also be released in Spain.  Along with the geocoin and the new, improved "Walking Sister", I will be taking "Dirty Red Plastic Monkey" and "Pilgrims Companion".  If you've been reading Homer's Travels for a long time you may remember the Dirty Red Plastic Monkey from this post.  The Pilgrim's Companion is a small Lego Figure that I found on a beach near Ventura, California.

So I will be dropping three bugs and one geocoin in Spain.  I'll be loading nine geocaches in my GPS - six in Santiago de Campostela and three in Finisterre.  I will be putting the bugs in caches at the end on my Camino so that it is not an extra distraction during the Camino.  Hopefully the Europeans will be more generous with my travel bugs and not lose them.

5 comments:

  1. this is really all greek to me, but I hope you have a great time!!

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  2. Will cross my fingers for the little guys. I should really find the time to get into Geochaching someday...

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  3. MMC: Thanks. It is a little geeky, I must admit.

    GH: It's a hobby that can mesh well with hiking.

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  4. I was wondering if you have done your Camino yet or not and how the geocaching went? I am looking at going on my Camino in about a year and I am researching which one I will do and the possible geocaches. It doesnt seem as though anyone has made a .KML or .KMZ file yet. Do you know of one?

    Thanks,
    DC aka Lewench on geocaching.com

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  5. DC: I completed my Camino last summer and found two geocaches (one in Santiago and one in Fisterra). I limited my geocaches to ones at the end of the Camino. I'm glad I did this because I was often too tired to go caching at the end of the walking day. If I'd done caches along the way I think I would have found it to be distracting from my Camino experience.

    I don't have any info on kml or kmz files. Sorry.

    Buen Camino!!!

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