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When I was young, I used to draw maps and mark an X on the spot where I wanted to find treasure. There never was any, but today there are more than 2,500 hidden treasures in Dunedin. Every day in our city these treasures are found, swapped around, and put back for you to find by a whole community of curiosity curators. They are geocachers, in operation since the early 2000s. They make the underneaths of park benches, holes under trees, and shadowy staircases places of hope, not fear and mild revulsion.

Despite the prize-winning description of “new age treasure hunting,” there is very little gold to be found: geocaching considers itself to be tech-tastic, which means it’s all about the virtual reward. Technology leads you to the X, but whatever’s buried will invariably disappoint; instead, you log your successful find online for some digital glory. In this sense, enthusiasts could more aptly be said to be going on adventures; it’s all about the journey.

The quest starts at geocaching.com. There are a few other sites out there, but this is the oldest and the biggest. You’ll need to sign up, but it takes less than five minutes and costs you nothing. When searching for a cache to hunt, you can type in your region, city, or area code; it all depends on how much you plan to travel. As a pedestrian, I confined myself to an area code.

A list will come up of all the caches. The ones highlighted in green are for beginners, and I strongly recommend starting from the beginning. The easiest one closest to me was “Three Stars (Otago)”: the co-ordinates were S 45° 52.645 E 170° 29.979 (you can convert the type of co-ordinates on the website). The ways in which the cache I was hunting was described were: “an easy walk-by,” and “stealth will be required.” It sounded perfect for an unfit, professional lurker like myself.

To do it, you’ll need a GPS-enabled smartphone, Internet access, and a pencil.

Back in the day, you either printed out a page of the Internet or spent massive bucks on a handheld GPS (with a print-out of the clues). It took plenty of time and dedication and, says Sam, a geocacher from way back: “it was good when you found the cache, because then you could go home.” Thanks to my super-fancy Android abilities, I anticipated much faster satisfaction.

You don’t realise how big a small, pinpointed area is until you’re in it. I was standing exactly where my smartphone said I should be, and completely failing to see my reward. I denied that I was unobservant and clueless, and instead doubted my GPS. I wandered over to the Speight’s Brewery to ask if they knew what their co-ordinates were. They didn’t, but they sold me a pencil.

I went back to look with fresh eyes, and sat down to survey my environs. I looked back at the description printout, along with the clue I’d been too lazy to decrypt: I did it then. It was just a simple re-shuffling of the alphabet; I was a beginner. More difficult codes and ciphers can include numerical systems, images, logic, and other various “puzzles,” sometimes in stages. Even the co-ordinates you’re given can be a trick.

I found that my clue was “sit on the step and right hand down.” I slowly stretched my right hand down, the anticipation of finding a treasure building just as much as the fear of spiders jumping on my exploring hand. I clutched at nothing, and nearly threw my Speight’s pencil in an angry outburst. I didn’t, though, because then I would have had to pick it up. I went back to the spot my GPS had led me to earlier, and found another step. I sat down, and stealthily clawed in a downward direction. I felt something, and it wasn’t a spider! It was a very tiny black container, and I anticipated finding jewels inside, or at least a novelty USB.

It was a scrap of paper carrying the names of past finders. I felt cheated. Malevolently, I signed my name as “Dicks.” Benevolently, I snapped my pencil in half and put it inside as a reward for the next hunter. I later realised that what I’d thought to be the rain-smudged names of young children named for their parents’ favourite captchas were “codenames.” In the age of the Internet, “codenames” – i.e. your Reddit username – are necessarily more unique than your actual first name; using it guarantees your glory won’t be usurped by a copycat Jessica. I suppose my contribution of “Dicks” wasn’t too out of place.

Once upon a time, I would not have been so thwarted by the game. The first geocache was set up in Oregon, USA, back in the year 2000. The co-ordinates of a plastic, black bucket were posted on a forum, and when it was found it contained books, food, money, software, a slingshot, and – this really ages it – videos. What a find! A cache half that rich is one I would gladly hunt for up to an hour!

The first caches were all like this, and searching for them was called a “GPS stash hunt.” Eventually people realised that this sounded super shady, which, along with the “suspicious activity” one is inevitably investigated for after too many evenings spent crawling under park benches, meant a name change was required: geocaching was born.

The free-spirited lifestyle of the geocacher seems light-hearted and outdoorsy; it’s easy to forget that something else that happens outdoors is dying. While searching for their caches, unfortunate souls can occasionally stumble upon a corpse, or part of one. People have found a man who guillotined himself, a dead hunter, someone hanging in a forest, and the body parts of a murdered woman in Auckland were found in concrete containers near the cache. There was also a wasp’s nest five metres from the cache.

Sometimes geocachers don’t find the dead; they become it. In 2011, an experienced geocacher in Dresden, Germany died trying to retrieve an “easy” cache, and in 2012 an American man fell to his death geocaching in some mountains. The lesson to be learned from this – particularly in a country with great but perilous scenery like New Zealand – is to know your limits. If you feel like a cache is dodgy, or the terrain is shaky, don’t be afraid to go back and try another one.

On the other hand, acquainting yourself with what caches look like can save your life: In 2008, stranded hikers in Oregon were lost and close to death, able to contact a rescue party but unable to tell them where they should search. In their snow cave, they stumbled across a cache: they told search and rescue about it, who were able to use the website to pinpoint their position and save their lives.

This was an inspiring note to end my research on, but before I went hunting again I wanted to find out what kicks people were actually getting out of this game. I found out about Travel Bugs, track-able items which are often put into caches with a goal in mind: each person who finds it must move it closer to a certain location. Recently, the “Lone Star Wanderer” completed its mission of travelling from Spokane, Washington to Galveston Island, Texas. It sounds like a small trip across the country, but on its way it passed through Russia, Europe, Cyprus, and the Bahamas.

One person I spoke to had been part of a movement to move a Travel Bug from the bottom of New Zealand to the North Pole; an ambitious quest for a human, let alone a bug trapped in a box. Our brave hunter found the bug, and decided to move it to a new location another day. He forgot about it. “Now it just sits in the back of my closet,” he admitted to me, “I can’t look at it, because I realise that I can’t even handle the responsibility of a children’s game.” He turned away in shame, and wandered back to EB Games.

I wasn’t convinced that geocaching was for kids: I struggled at the “beginner” level, and apparently I’m an adult. However, reading forums about it I quickly learned that the community calls people who aren’t into geocaching “muggles.” This suggests that even if the game isn’t for kids, it’s at least for nerds. There is actually a cache called “Muggleicious” in Dunedin, but it’s for premium members only. One cache in Dunedin includes in its description, “this is muggle country, and they can appear at all times of the day.” Unlike vampires, muggles are a 24/7 threat, and can cause serious headaches.

To combat the threat of a cache being “muggled,” many hiders disguise their caches. They might look like bolts, be painted in camo, or tucked away into a dark spot where they can only be found by plunging your fingers into the unknown. There’s a solid rule in geocaching of “put your hand in every hole.” This is a terrible idea in places like Australia, where every hole hides death, but in friendly Dunedin it’s a good modus operandi.

Not all caches are the size of bolts, though: the original caches were large plastic buckets, perfect for holding bountiful treasures. If I was going to get something out of this exercise, it was a big bucket I needed to find. I searched the website and finally found a cache along the Pineapple Track. It was rated “large,” meaning it could hold at least 20L, and it was the oldest cache in the South Island; it’s one of the oldest in the country! I knew people would respect such an antique, and keep it filled with reverential treasures. In keeping with the historic nature of the cache, I took my oldest book and some mints for “swaps.”

Google Maps told me it was only a 14-minute drive from my house to S 45°50.066’ E 170°27.094’, which is where I could park the car and continue on foot. It was wrong. It was a half-hour drive from the city centre, although – full disclosure – I was mislead by the instruction to park “at the Bull Ring,” something I’d never heard of but assumed I’d find when I saw a cow. My tip: listen to your co-ordinates, not livestock.

Once there, I had a half-hour walk up 150m ahead of me. The track was well-worn and easy going, but it was utterly freezing. I began to dream of a box full of blankets, and a gun for the shrieking chorus that was Nature. I finally got to the top, and glanced down at the printout: “don’t forget to stop and admire the panoramic view of the city and the Taieri plain.” I agreed that I should take in my surroundings, and serenely sipped on three of the six Vita-Gos I’d brought, while gazing at the far-off metropolis of Mosgiel.

It was very relaxing. Earlier I’d been as cold as an Antarctic cache, but the sun and the walk had warmed me up to the point where I’d been able to take my sweatshirt off and tie it around my waist, just like my athletic Facebook friends who go hiking for fun, and not because of familial obligations. A tiny bird wasn’t further than four metres from me, and the sand-coloured grass made the world seem topsy-turvy. In my head, I had become John Carter: I was on an alien world, but I was in control. I was the powerful one. I surrendered to the hunt, and wandered around for a while humming and chest-beating like Matthew McConaughey.

Sufficiently amped for the box, I went back to the ground zero co-ordinates and checked the clue I’d deciphered ahead of time, which I won’t reveal in case you want to do it yourself. Some of the previous logs had said they’d had to crash through the bush a bit to find it. I had picked up a big stick on the hike up especially for beating up nature with, so into the bush I dove. I poked and prodded at every flax bush, rock, and grassy mound; I walked the required six metres in every direction, because I didn’t trust myself to accurately determine “south-west;” I began to narrate my own actions; and finally, I found my prize.

My stick struck out at a flash of white underneath a bush. It made a tapping sound – I’d struck plastic! I pulled it out, and was pleased to see that there were some really sentimental, sweet treasures in there. I signed the logbook, this time with a codename and nothing phallus-esque, and put my swaps in the bucket. I only took one thing out, as a souvenir. When I saw that the treasures inside were more of emotional than financial value, I knew I couldn’t take those from someone who would pass them on better than I would. I didn’t want to be that guy with a Travel Bug in his closet.

It was good when I found the cache, because then I could go home. The trip had been rewarding up until I figured out that plenty of other people had found the cache, too. After some reflection, I realised that I may not have been special, but the journey was satisfying, and at least I wasn’t proving myself by going to some of the most dangerous caches in the world: the one in the middle of Compton; the one in a Bagram war zone; or the one involving leaping over a several-hundred-foot-high chasm.

Here in Otago, it would seem, we have the perfect environment for geocaching. Americans are often banned from placing caches in historic areas and national parks, and police stop any kind of “suspicious activity” (damn muggles); a common complaint from Europeans is that there just isn’t enough nature to get into and rummage around in (and Australia and Asia are full of scary animals). A global complaint is that most of the caches are small (prizeless) and urban (easy and homogenous). New Zealand has very little dangerous wildlife, and Dunedin is the perfect size for getting the most out of urban/nature variety.

The terrible “swaps,” though, are more than a pain: they’re totally off-putting. All the caches in my area were old Kodak film cannisters that held nothing but a scraggly scrap of paper and a beat-up pencil. I know geocachers are afraid of muggles, but maybe you could let them help: urban caches are like hard-to-find, shitty Christmas crackers. If we all keep our eyes out for tiny black boxes and agree to put something of worth in them – even just $2, or a small magnifying glass – then maybe geocaching could be worth it.

Oh the other hand, caches out in the wild – or even just a 15-minute drive wildwards – can be the impetus for a little appreciation of nature. I’d never done the Pineapple Track before, and it was what my mother would call “invigorating;” it made me sneeze and I didn’t feel the need to go to the gym later. And, of course, there’s nothing to make you appreciate the disappointment of urban caches more than the filthiness of natural ones.