Curaçao Hiking

Hiking apps - evaluation

Introduction

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To assist my readers in choosing a good phone-app for following and discovering hiking trails on their own I have evaluated a number of apps during about a half year. The chosen apps are:

Locus Map; that is the app that I was using most during my hikes before I started this evaluation
AllTrails
Gaia GPS
Wikiloc; that is the app that I used when I started to register my hikes

The results are shown below. If you want to skip the details and immediately want to jump to the conclusions you can click here after clicking Read more to display the full article.

Availability of the apps per kind of phone

Locus Map is only available on Android phones / tablets
AllTrails is available on Android and Apple phones / tablets
Gaia GPS is available on Android and Apple phones / tablets
Wikiloc is available on Android and Apple phones / tablets

So only Locus map is limited to Android phones. No disadvantage for me because I am using an Android phone, but definitely a big minus for Apple phone users.

Safe hiking practices

Hiking essentials web
Recent events made me rethink my hiking practices. Safety always was a concern for me, but I realized that still not everything was in place. For instance, what would happen if I was hiking on my own and something happened to me? Would others be able to find me quickly enough? So I started looking for tools that specifically address this issue. But that for later, first what are my normal practices.

Other hiking organizations in Curaçao

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How to follow the trails on your own

At the end of 2019 Curaçao Hiking stops organizing guided hikes. Of course there are alternative hiking organizations; see the overview with links on the home page of this site. An alternative is to go hiking yourself or with a group of friends or similar minded people. To facilitate that I provide several options and tools:

A facebook group where you can create an event for your hike so that other members of that group can accompany you on your hike; you need to be an accepted member of that group to use this service
Descriptions of most of the trails that Curaçao has offered; these descriptions can be found on this site in the section Hiking
A map with the track for most of the trails that Curaçao Hiking has offered; this map can be found as a downloadable picture in the description of the hike on this site in the section Hiking or as a downloadable picture in the Files section of the above mentioned facebook group
The track of most of the trails that Curaçao Hiking has offered; these tracks can be found in several places:
1. Wikiloc
2. As a downloadable file in the description of the hikes in the section Hiking on this site
3. As a downloadable file in the Files section in the above mentioned facebook group
Suggestion for tools to follow the track (see the remainder of this article)

Facebook group created to facilitate hikers

Under the facebook page of Curaçao Hiking I have created a closed group called Curaçao Hiking Group. The purpose of that group is to create a meeting place for hikers in Curaçao. From comments during my guided hikes I have learnt that a lot of people like hiking but don't want or dare to hike on their own. This group could help these hikers to get company during their intended hikes. By creating an event in the group or by posting their intended hike in the group they can invite other members of the group to attend their hike.