OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2012
WIZZ MAGAZINE
11
O
ndrej Prochazka, a 25-year-old
university student, wanders along
the Vltava riverbank, a block
from Prague’s National Theatre, carefully
scanning the pavement for signs of hidden
treasure. He consults his handheld GPS unit
and stops. “I think it’s down there,” he says,
and jumps over the iron railings to descend
a ladder bolted to the embankment. Less
than a minute later he climbs back up with
his prize – a small black container that
he found wedged in a cleft between the
stones. It’s a geocache.
Geocaching is essentially a high-tech
scavenger hunt conducted using GPS
coordinates. The treasure, or cache, is
generally nothing more than a small toy or
trinket stashed in a film canister or plastic
container. The fun is in finding them.
“
You have to come prepared,” says
Prochazka, pulling a pen out of his
backpack, which he uses to winkle out
another cache by the Terezka Fountain.
Inside is a rolled up logbook, which he signs
and dates. “I like it when I can discover
some special places while geocaching,” he
says. “It’s a great way to learn about a city
you’ve never been to.”
The sport began life in the United States
in 2000 after the government unscrambled
satellite signals, allowing public access
to once-secret military technology. By
the following year, the popularity of
geocaching had spread across Europe,
including to the Czech Republic, which
today has some 30,000 hidden caches.
Many of these are in Prague’s city centre,
around the Old Town and Prague Castle;
there’s supposedly a cache in the hand of
one of the towering statues in front of the
National Museum on Wenceslas Square,
and several down in the old sewer system.
Locations are obviously kept as secret
as possible, otherwise the fun is taken out
of the hunt. Serious geocachers, such as
Prochazka, who has been doing this for six
years, prefer to leave the crowds behind
and strike out for the rugged terrain of
the city’s expansive parks, such as
Stromovka, Letenske Sady, Petrin Hill and
the further afield Divoka Sarka. The parks
offer more of a challenge simply because
there are that many more places to hide
a cache. “I enjoy having to work for your
treasure,” he says. “Especially when you
have to climb something.”
For more information, visit geocaching.com
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WIZZ GOES GEOCACHING IN PRAGUE
Words by Julie O’Shea
