Geocaching - Voćin, Slatina
This field trip happened last year - 2013. Actually, it took place on Labor Day - May the 1st, but for us geocachers barbecue and beer are always of secondary importance. 
As that day is non-working day, Valentin (Zagy) and his brother Josip contacted us to go with them on the field trip, ie geocaching, to southwest part of Virovitičko-podravska county to places Voćin, Slatina and Višnjica. Zagy already found most of those caches, but he had no trouble revisiting and showing us all the nice places. Besides, Zagy wanted to place a few geocaches so he had some extra reasons for this field trip. The day was moderately warm with plenty of sunshine - it was perfect for outdoor activities - so we couldn't refuse the invitation.
As soon as we arrived in Voćin, we headed for the park that lured us with its colors and shade. When we entered the park, we noticed a little river. Walking through the park, we came across the board that describes ruins of the castle Janković that was here long time ago, but was burned to the ground and now you can hardly see the ruins that look like the pile of earth. However, these ruins are considered as architectural park monument.
While walking, we met some local „residents“ of this park, and Zagy wanted to
become more familiar with them. But the reason of our visit to Voćin wasn't to walk through the park, but to find a hidden geocache on the hill nearby where the remains of the fortress Voćin stands.
But the hill that we mentioned looks more like a mountain when you want to climb it. And yes, you have two ways to get up there: the easier one (mild, but long meandering path to the top) and the harder one (steep and life-threatening cliff with the rope). Guess who decided to go the harder, but quicker way. Of course, Zagy had to try to climb the rope and to perpetuate that way his memory of this cache (photo & photo). It required some time to find the cache because the ground around the fortress is quite steep, the grass is high, and you can't see where you're standing while you're searching for the cache. Zagy and his brother Josip had found it before, so they just stood aside while Maja and I were searching around the fortress. The interesting thing is that two GPS devices navigated us in opposite directions - one on the left and the other on the right side of the fortress. But my Motorola was right so I found the cache first.
We came back the same road through park to our car. We sat down on nearby benches and had a very good meal when Maja spotted a playground and a slider that she just had to try. While we were resting we came to the idea that this park has to have its own geocache because you have much to see and read from information boards throughout the park. Idea for hiding a geocache was also a reason of this trip so we brought with us geocaches of different sizes and empty logbooks so we could immediately hide a geocache. So when Zagy measured coordinates this picture was created and it is a some kind of a spoiler to find Park of Voćin so you have a little help from us.
We left he park, but from this place we are visiting even nicer location that Zagy visited during winter time. It is geological location unique for this territory, and an earth cache Lava Columns Rupnica is placed here which shows that we had vulcanic activity on this area. Lava Columns that incurred are rarity for this part of Europe and we could be really proud because on it.
When you want of find an earth cache you don't find an actual geocache but you give answers to some questions that owner made. And the answers are often hidden on info boards placed on such locations. Also this info boards are placed that you walk around whole area so you wouldn't miss to see or learn something. But the whole time while we were walking over this location we heard some noise. There weren't any wind or car passing by so we concluded that there is a water nearby. And water for me means good photos. (photo & photo)
We drove further to our next geocache location Dva stara hrasta. But to get to the geocache we needed to get out of the car and walk through dense pine forest for some 15 minutes.
It wasn't hard to find location of two old oaks but geocache that was hidden in the vicinity was a bit harder. GPS coordinates were jumping around because you don't have a clear sky over your head so signal was weak. Location is called two old oak trees but just one persistently stands while the other one was torn and broke by winds and old age. Geocache was finally found and it isn't that hard nor it is far away from the oak tree. We were happy for finding this one so we made a group photo.
We are now leaving Voćin and getting closer to city Slatina. However we didn't want to search geocaches around town, we wanted to search caches placed in nature. So we decided to visit lake Javorica near Slatina and search for the hidden geocache on that location. There were a lot of visitors on the lake that day because of warm and sunny day but they didn't distract us in our search for geocache. As you can see our task wasn't easy, and cache is somewhere here so we practically "redecorated" some 3 meters of the shore around the lake.
But, as always it paid of. Cache was successfully found and we still have pleasant and funny memories on our search. After all if here wasn't that hidden geocache we would never seen this beautiful lake that day.
Our story leads you further towards place Višnjica. This is huge complex made for domestic and foreign visitors. It all started as small place for field trip but it has grown to horse farm, nursery of roebucks, and organizing all kinds of manifestations. Here you can have ride in horse wagon or you can visit horse stables or have a therapeutic horse ride.
When you rembember that here you have a hidden geocache with the purpose to attract you to this location we can only say that this is cleverly concealed offer for turists. The cache is hidden outside the fence of this location but it is all surrounded by by trees and it is nice especially if you visiti this place during Spring. Hidden box Maja, quickly and without problems, spotted and grabbed so others just joined for this photo.
And for the very end of our road trip we have a hidden geocache and it is so far away of civilization, and hidden somewhere in the fields. We surely never would visit him if there wasn't for Zagy and his enthusiasm. Because of that remote location in the fields this was real test for Zagy's new car. And it wasn't easy for our GPS to determine our location. We only could drive right to the levee along forest so we went further by foot but first we had to take photo of us with dusty car. And it was good walk to the cache because we wouldn't enjoy fresh air and saw does. Geocache is placed near house called karaula that served for the accommodation of the border units of the former JNA. Cache is intended primarily for radio amateurs, and location is suitable for amateur radio contest because of military observation post high 15 meters to which Zagy has climbed.
This story we will end that Zagy's car got his well deserved cleaning after exhausting day. And we got another memory on the field trip on a Labour Day when we didn't eat barbecue for the first time, but we wondered on remote but very nice locations over Slavonija.
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