Highlight - Germany
Population 81 Million people, 138,000 square miles, Nearing 200,000 geocaches
Comparison to California
Population 37 Million people, 160,000 square miles, Nearing 100,000 geocaches.
It is amazing to me to see a country where caching has taken off like Germany. So much so that groundspeak is doing a series of videos highlighting caching there.
The thought I had was a country the size of Montana or New Mexico. With 81 million people in it. (That is a lot of people) and not a lot of country and mountains has nearly 200,000 geocaches. Making it the biggest group of cachers outside the United States.
There is a large group of reviewers for Germany. There are about 35 reviewers in Germany, and they review a vast number of different kinds of caches. On a day to day basis 15-20 come across my queue in Utah. Sometimes far more, and in the winter maybe 5-15. I think about 15% are puzzle caches, and 2-3% multi caches, it is rare that I see anything else.
However Germany is full of creative puzzles and multi caches. The sheer number make people take the time and look at what they are doing. Make something that people can talk about and stand in awe of.
I notice the difference when I look at the map. In Utah and many of the other states in the US you see a sea of green tiles with some blue tossed in. here you see the yellow of the multicaches as well.
That creates a huge challenge for the cache placer and the reviewers. there are far many more caches where you may not know where the physical stages or the finals are. You have to be much more careful and expect to be told that there is a problem.
In any case I recommend that a cache page be created with the approximate coords then email the reviewer asking if there are issues. Nothing is more depressing than someone traveling 50 miles up into an area and finding out that there is a cache located nearby.
Well. That is it for today. See you soon on the trail.