Papuk - Cache In Trash Out Event (No.1)
Saturday the 20th of April 2013 will remain in our memories for a long time. We achieved many personal records that day and we also contributed for better tomorrow. That particular Saturday we participated on our first CITO event in Croatia in town Velika near Papuk and thus mark the upcoming International Earth Day.
We departed from Vapovo at 8AM with Zagy and his brother Josip. It was funny that we didn't recognize them while they were comming by car because Zagy bought a new car in only a week. 
It was nice to drive in it.
On our way we stopped in Našice to find Zagy's hidden cache which waited for us for whole 2 months for the FTF. There was also some kind of fair at the main square so we held a bit and bought some blackberry wine for later.
It is now 9 o'clock and we must hurry up to city Velika where is official gathering for the CITO event. When we came to the event it looked like everyone waited just for us but it was still enough time before start.
The crew from GeoPark Papuk imagined to carry out this event through few stages. First stage was through presentation introduce GPS devices, geocaching and geocache containers, and the point of CITO event to the children of the elementary school. Everyone there present were shown real geocaches and GPS devices that were later used on the field. Also everyone there logged in at the real logbook.
There was also shown an example of logging the geocache on the Internet and also was shown an example of real log. That was especially funny because show log was from Zagy and that geocacher doesn't save words when he is writing one. After, this detailed and interesting presentation, we went out to split in groups. There were formed three groups and every group went to find one different hidden geocache. And the meeting after the search was at meadow by the creek from which will be held a CITO event to clean up various waste.
Our group got an experienced guide Mr. Miroslav who told us stories about various locations on Papuk. You can consider him as a guide and also as a keeper of Nature park Papuk, and also a keeper of hidden geocaches around.
Our hidden geocache which our group had to find was hidden in the vicinity of the Mountain home Lapjak. Various streams are intersecting the city of Velika so our walk was filled with murmur of brisk, cold and fresh water.
For me and Maja, being in nature by the water, flowers and birds chirping, this was the best possible experience.
When we came near the mountain home the children from the elementary school were already impatient, because for them this was their first search for geocache. Every two kids had one GPS device so Maja offered ours fro the search. You can only imagine the desire that you could be the one to find the hidden geocache. We, as grown ups, were at the back of the search because the whole point was for children to find the geocache using GPS device. And it didn't take them long to find it, because they were looking everywhere real fast.
But imagine what happened then. While the children were signing the logbook one of them asked: "Is there more of them hidden?" That was the reaction that we liked to hear. We are hopping that this kid will love this kind of activity and so it will love nature and surroundings around him, to learn something new, and maybe place its own geocache. Thus we will be invited again to visit this hidden part of nature.
Everyone happy, that we found hidden geocache, we all went down the road to meadow where was gathering. Along the way we came upon the chapel of St. John end of which stood the bell tower. Our guide Mr. Miroslav, told us that mountaineers have this tradition to ring the bell for the souls of the dead so they could find their peace. We finally came to the meadow on a little picnic and refreshment with the juices from the organizer and all that beside the creek. We wrote before that every group had its own geocache to find. We had a medium hard difficulty geocache to find so we waited for the third group which was comming back from high altitude from geocache Stara bukva. And while waiting, my attention was distracted by, previously mentioned, babbling creek.
From this point further we are going as complete, whole three groups were merged and we are going to find the hidden geocache Plamen not far from the meadow. And exactly that geocache find was the one of the records that we achieved. So far, this was the biggest FTF found at the first CITO event ever held in Croatia. We are hopping that you understand us, if not, we can only tell you that for us it matters.
And now is comming up the reason of our coming here and that is implementation of the CITO event. The organizer distributed everyone gloves and garbage bags. It only remained to explain everyone how will be cleaned the part from meadow all the way down to the entrance. Before we embarked to clean we made group photo as a memory of this event. And again we were separated into three groups. One group was cleaning the meadow, other cleaned part next to the creek, and our group cleaned the part by the asphalt road. How many bags we got it just wasn't enough because it never ends the human negligence when it comes to pollution. When we cleaned the part from the meadow right to the entrance we gathered twenty bags of various garbage. We are sorry that this action like CITO was even necessary on a nice place like this. But we are also glad that those 20 bags were filled up so we made a step to cleaner, better place and for better tomorrow. Every participant, from the organizer, children from the elementary school and us geocachers, agreed that this event should become tradition and to come here every next year to repeat the CITO and cleaning of the environment. Until then receive greetings from the whole CITO crew that day.
At the very end, unfortunately, we need to say this also. When we were comming back from the meadow Maja and me have decided to find geocache that one group has found before. But when we came to the spot, and searched everywhere geocache was missing or muggled. We don't want to point the guilty one but that is what is happening when something that good like geocaching goes to public. Geocaching, simple said, is just too good but unfortunately everyone should, on its own way, found out about it. For us the missing geocache didn't spoil the whole experience of the search and what have we learned at the spot where the cache was hidden. So for us this geocache wasn't so important to find but it is important for the next geocacher and they could be disappointed. In hopping that this is isolated case and by next year here will be many more hidden geocaches recive greetings from geocaching team Matko & Maja.
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