I would like to invite you to a nice hiking and a game on Margaret island. The goal of the hiking is to visit a few notable trees on the island. During your walk, you are also invited to a game, the point of which is to find and solve logical puzzles, riddles. The solution determines the location of the next stage. At the last stage you will find a normal geocache where you can sign the logbook and exchange trading items.
Important: The beautiful trees are warmly recommended for everyone but the connected game is not! You should play it only if you like riddles and you are willing to use your brain to solve the puzzle hiding the coordinates of the next stage.
Because the area is extremely crowded, seeking, finding and hiding the caches back requires you to be very careful. In other words, in addition to finding and solving the riddles, you have to pay special attention not to reveal the caches for muggles. If you can use a bicycle, do it. Small fake repair actions or putting my backpack on the bike and pretending searching for something in it were useful methods to conceal my real activities when hiding the caches. Please share your other ideas for how to act in crowded places like this to keep the caches safe. All such stealth techniques will be very useful for this cache.
This game consists of 9+1 stages. All of them have a small surprise for you, either because of the way the cache is hidden or through the riddle you will find there. At some locations you will find help material which you may not be able to use immediately. In such cases it is a good idea to memorize the contents of the help material or take notes or photos of it, however, it is not at all a must. You'll know why. ;-)
All coordinates are of the form N 47° 31,XXX' E 019° 02,YYY'. Sometimes you will only find the XXX and YYY numbers.
For every stage, two hints are provided but PLEASE TRY TO AVOID USING THEM! Believe me, this game is much better without them! :) You'd rather use your geocaching instincts to find the caches and use your brain to solve the riddles. I tried to bring you riddles that are a little unusual in some way and yet they are feasible to solve by everyone after a short thinking.
Here are the hints. Try to avoid using them as much as possible. If you absolutely want to see them, read them backwards with appropriate word breaking:
1/1: Ren roce htta.
1/2: Thgieh daehtae disni.
2/1: Sehcnar bneewte beldarcnis evael rednu.
2/2: Llam ehtfo tseria fehts' ohw, llaw ehtno rorrim, rorrim?
3/1: Nibtsu dehted isninet tirwseta nidrooc.
3/2: Edisnis' tahwtako olossey eruoyfot norfnis inibt sudeht.
4/1: Hgihser temitne cythgi ednaderd nuhenos sensselra effotset.
4/2: Tih ctefd naog, pleh ehtdeen uoyfi.
5a/1: Yllu feractu otiekat, hgihser temowt.
5a/2: Rewsnaru oykceh cuoy nehwsno srepla utcafok niht.
5b/1: hgihser temitne cytxis dna derdnuh eno.
5b/2: Tie katotde enuoy tubtie esnacuoy.
6/1: Elbae citonsid nesti, hgihser temowtdnu ordnallams.
6/2: Sweivtne reffi deer htmorf titadekoolu oyfieesu oydluowsret teltahw?
7/1: Tcejbo gnirevo ceht tuoekat dnatinodnats.
7/2: Plehelt tiladee nyamuoy tubtsilai cepsaebo tdeent'n oduoy.
8/1: Citengam, draob ehts, drawot, motto B.
8/2: No oskcab tignir buoyfiti fotraplait nesse ehtekat nacuoy.
9/1: Tidni fotpleh deent'n oduoy.
9/2: Teeh seht none ttirw txeteh tnit nihgi basiereht.
Attention! The above coordinates do NOT point to the cache! To start the game, you have to begin with a composite number: 109061.
You can check your answer for this puzzle on Geochecker.com.
Stage 9 is the final cache and it contains a riddle, too. This riddle, however, is neither easy nor suitable to solve immediately at the cache. Take a page, bring it home and solve it there with a clear mind and with steady hands. The solution is a Hungarian word. It won't be difficult if you can recall the exact things you saw fixed into the box. ;-) In case your Hungarian is considerably weaker than your mother tongue, an anagram solver will come in handy (for example, http://szotar.sztaki.hu/docs/anagramma/ , type some letters in the Kifejezés field and press the Keresés button).
Please note that this cache is also listed on geocaching.hu where a password is needed to log your find electronically. That password consists of two parts. You can find the first part at location 5a and the second part is the solution of the riddle in the final cache. You don't need the password to log your visit here on geocaching.com but you are welcome to solve the final riddle anyway. Please make sure that you don't publish the password anywhere.
Important things:
- Be very very careful when seeking the caches and putting them back.
- While thinking on the solutions, go away a little from the cache location.
Miscellaneous information:
- Some little boxes won't open easily, please open them with a little more force after grabbing them at the marked spots.
- Whatever you find in the boxes, you should handle them gently without any force.
- If textual information is involved in the riddle, the text is available both in English and in Hungarian. In some cases the nature of the riddle requires a different picture for different languages. It is enough to solve one of them but you can solve both if you like. You can also use the other language to double check your answer.
- There are photos of the hides on this site but they are hidden! ;-) You can look for them if you want to but you can find the caches without them, too.
Here are the notable trees to visit:
Sycamores at the fountain
Next to the fountain with its water sent up to 25 meters in the rhythm of the background music, you can admire the fascinating sycamores (plane trees).
Black pines
Several more of these pines lived here earlier but the others were cut and used for the building of the so called Manci pontoon-bridge in 1945.
Old orange-mulberry
This severely leaning orange-mulberry tree, unlike most of the trees on the island, lived through the flood in 1838.
Seven Captains
In spite of its name, this special sycamore has six trunks today. The tree was heavily damaged during its live several times but it always managed to regrow its roots and trunks. Long live Seven Captains!
Old oak trees
These old oaks were the favourite trees of János Arany, one of the most famous Hungarian poets. His bust statue is also located here.
One of Europe's most beautiful sycamores
It is almost 40 meters high, its perimeter is six and a half meters.
The following remarkable trees can be found in the Japanese Garden in the northern part of the Island:
Three Chinese deciduous mammoth pines
In 1941, when this kind of tree was discovered, a research group was sent to China by the Harvard university to collect seedlings and seeds. Since that time it has turned out that these trees are very slow to come in full yield. Instances planted in Europe and in America in the '40s started to bloom during the '90s only. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasequoia)
Two Caucasian winged walnut trees with many trunks
Its latin name (pterocarya fraxinifolia) is a hint for the leaf being very similar to that of the ash. It originates from Caucasus and North Iran. Its usual living area is forests, riverbanks, marshlands. The tree material it produces is light and soft. For example, they make matches and shoes out of it. These trees are planted in parks and tree lines for the shadow they provide. (http://www.barcham.co.uk/trees/pterocarya-fraxinifolia-wing-nut)
Virginian white cypress
It is located at the bank of the little stream going to the lake of the Japanese garden. Its respiratory roots (pneumatophores) look like small columns above the ground. Respiratory roots are usually grown by instances located on riverbanks or living in close (airless) soil. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxodium_distichum)
Have fun!