We moved to the Algarve, from South East England in June 2009, completing a plan that had been in place for 7 years.  It was in our 2nd year of living in Portugal and with an ever increasing circle of friends that two of them first mentioned  Geocaching to us.  We’d heard the word before but had no real idea what it was or how popular it is.  A little bit of research later and a couple of attempts and we were hooked!

We are not the most prolific cachers, in all the years we have been participating we have only 321 finds.  We don’t rush out for the new local caches, we have never had a FTF and we are not the most patient for long searches. But we do enjoy it greatly especially when we visit new places and use it to find hidden gems that are not always found in the guide books.

A little over five years ago we bought some Travel bugs.  Some we gave as presents to friends who we had introduced to geocaching but two we kept for ourselves and sent them off into the world.

One starting in our home town of Lagos with a simple mission to travel 5000 miles.  It has easily accomplished this task but has sadly gone the way of so many trackables and got lost.

The other we took with us on holiday to Chicago and left it in a Cache on Navy Pier, a favourite place of ours on 23rd December 2012.  It’s name “Return to Sender” and it’s goal to get back home to Lagos.

We were quite expecting it to travel around America for a while but the first person to find it was returning to the UK the following day so it was back in Europe before we were!

We watched with interest as it moved from the UK to Germany (where it spent a great deal of time) and beyond.  At one point in August 2016 it arrived in the south of France and we were quite excited at the thought it may then get into Spain and closer to home.

It was not to be, it went back to Germany!

It continued its travels and went to a number of countries that we have not yet had the chance to visit until finally in October 2017 it got picked up by “netnap” who was planning a visit to Lisboa at the end of November.  First though they took it on even greater travels. It was then transferred to “AntJesus” who took it to a number of caches in the Algarve before finally placing it in “Canto Inferior Direito 2” at the most south easterly point of Portugal near Vila Real San Antonio.

Christmas came and went and it had not moved for a few weeks and with little else to do in January we thought well why not have a couple of days away at the other end of the Algarve and do some geocaching.  We booked a hotel in Monte Gordo and looked forward to our weekend away.  The day before we were planning to try and find this cache there was a new log it had been found but no mention of our Travel Bug – was it still there?

We set off on 19th January and headed straight to the cache.  It was a long and at times tricky walk to the GZ out on the rocky promontory and when the GPS told us we had arrived there was a local Muggle fisherman setting up very close by.  We were not to be put off! We had come this far and so the search began.  It is an interesting cache location but with the help of the hint and a couple of photographs we soon found what we were looking for.

Would the TB still be inside?  Yes!!

There it was back with us after its extraordinary journey; 18 countries and over 36,000 kilometres.

It now has pride of place in a frame back home in Lagos.

Ray & Tina