Geocaching or alternative game/activity to learn the basics of GPS navigation in terrain
We are 5 friends on vacation. Each of us has a smartphone but most have no experience with GPS. If we were only 2 or so I would suggest geocaching for getting practice. But with 5 it would just lead to one doing the work and 4 following him without learning much.
So the question is:
Is there an alternative game?
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You could look for Orienteering competitions in the area you will be traveling to as well.
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You can try waymarking. The concepts comes from virtual caches, which currently are able to register only in a few geocaching portals, such as opencaching.de.
However, if your aim is to learn your friends to use GPS, I don't see any problem with geocaching. The most difficult part - finding a cache - requires some experience with geocaching, and it would be done probably mostly by you. But that part requires much more perceptivity and experience, than GPS skills.
What you can do is to learn them how to navigate to the direct neighborhood of the cache. Let's say, to the distance less than 10 meters from cache. Then, no matter if you find the cache or not, the leading person would be changed. The next leading person would have the task to navigate to the next cache. It means, he/she would need to analyse the map, find the optimal way, and then manage to get there using GPS.
The most difficult part can be to choose the good direction, if you want, you may bring a compass with you.
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You could try the global multi-layer GPS game from Google: Ingress
You need to be able to navigate to locations (generally monuments, statues, major landmarks etc) and once there you claim them for your faction (or destroy the mods placed there by the opposing players) - and to handle higher level missions you need to be able to meet up with other players (a level 8 portal can only be created by 8 level 8 team members)
Once you own portals you join them to others and claim the land for your faction.
There are real life missions with actors and actresses, as well as commercial spin-offs, with freebies from some stores on completion of missions etc.
For more information check out the Ingress tag on the Arquade.
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