Geocaching-Sightseeing
Kristiansand – 3rd June
We got off the bus in the city and went straight to the ‘Travel Bug Hotel’ Geocache. We were muggled by a lovely German couple who had done ten caches to our one. We celebrated beating them to the prize by going to lunch at the fish market, a colourful wharf area, where the cruise ship offloads its patrons. Lunch was crumbed cod and chips NZ$25 each, consumed while watching the tourists choose their more expensive lobsters.
The next three caches were on the island of Odderoya, accessed by a small bridge. Possibly wasn’t the smartest idea straight after lunch as two of the caches required walking up a hill to the old artillery ruins, cruise ship patrons come by bus, smart tourists use e-scooters and leave them up there, we walked. The hill is mainly rock and bush, with the odd road for the few buildings up there. I’m not sure how many people come off the cruise ships to walk up the hill but a few hunt out the geocaches and log that they were off the Aida liner, with a capacity of 6,654 that’s a lot of potential geocachers.
The next geocache was at the lighthouse which is actually at the bottom of the hill, and easily accessible from the top, yeah right, we descended by a number of dodgy paths and very steep stone steps, plus a stiff breeze to cool us down. Two men were having a cup of coffee when we arrived, then cut two branches off a tree and had another cup, its hard work volunteering and directing tourists. We found two young German tourists, or they found us and wanted to know if we spoke German, random question to ask when you are in Norway and see a tourist wearing a New Zealand T-Shirt. Anyway they spoke perfect English and wanted to know if they could mountain bike to the top to see the lighthouse, we tried to tell them the lighthouse was at the bottom, but being young they knew better and rode off in the wrong direction.
Safely down from the mountain and back on the mainland we rewarded ourselves with a giant snow freeze ice cream and watched the tourists being relieved of their money. NZ$20 buys two of these ice creams and a full strength sugar taxed coke.
Kristiansand claims to have the second biggest sculpture plant in Norway since Vigeland, so off we went for a geocache. I now know when they say a big sculpture plant it is referring to one overall piece being big, not the whole park. This park had three little statues and this fountain/portal piece, hardly anything to write home about, oh I just did.
Last cache of the day is the heart of the city, the town square is laid with stone cobbles and they incorporated this heart pattern. In the middle of the heart is part of a toboggan because way back the town square was on top of a knoll and children used to toboggan down it. To log the geocache you had to make a heart and take a photo, we took two photos; one has the cathedral we visited afterwards.
Some geocache listings have a flag counter showing where all the people have come from who found their cache. The photo shows that we made geocache headlines by being the first New Zealand geocachers to find the Travel Bug Hotel in Kristiansand, whoopee.
Today’s ABBA tribute is ‘I saw it in the mirror’ (1973) for the little mirror tiles painted by 5300 local children with descriptions or images of their dreams. They have been stuck on the walls of the pedestrian under path, now called ‘Slow Bridge’, near the waterfront of Kristiansand as a community funded arts project.
