31-Jul-2004 -- For our first CP visit we have chosen the nearest point, only 60 kilometers to drive from our town to walk starting place. Our group of three persons was equipped with two GPSs: an old Magellan 320 and a recently bought GlobalSat BlueTooth GPS together with iPAQ PDA. Unfortunately, the modern GPS was lost in a swampy forest area in a very beginning (lack of wire connection is not always an advantage!), so PDA was later used as an electronic map of the area.

We left our car on the M18 main road and directed our footsteps to the forest. In about one hour (a lot of time was spent on trying to find out the lost GPS) we reached a small Westward railway (#7).

It is not easy to walk along a railway, it is why 8.2 kilometers trip took us more than 2.5 hours. Finally, in spite of hot sun and a lot of mosquitoes, we reached the 32E meridian line (#8). The distance to our goal from this point was about 200 meters, so we expected to be on CP in a few minutes.

In a half an hour of walking we discovered that getting “zero reading” from GPS is not exactly child's-play. During our “CP dance” we took a picture of general area from the top of nearest hill (#9) and finally stopped in a small clearing within two meters from 67N 32E CP. The reading was quite satisfactory (#6)! Studying the GPS track later on, we calculated our forest circulation distance. It was about 1.3 kilometer long and took us almost an hour!

After installing a tripod on the point and some celebration (#10) we took pictures of compass directions (#1, #2, #3, #4) and some more, from which panorama (#5) was composed.

We spent 3.5 hour for 9.3 km hiking back. Altogether 20.4 km hiking.