When they woke up in the morning, the first thing Mónica Baena and her partner Rafa Borras saw were papers with clues stuck to the closet in their room, mixed with doodles that they themselves had written down while deciphering coordinates. They are both fans of treasure hunts and those clues had to lead them to the desired prize.
It all started when, one day, the couple saw an advertisement for a game inspired by the classic treasure hunts of the 70s, adventures in which participants had to solve puzzles and find the hidden reward. It was called The Joc del Tresor and it was set in Catalonia. “We didn’t think twice,” they admit. “From that day on, the obsession with this type of games also began,” they add.
This hobby is causing a sensation in some parts of the world, thanks to prizes and tempting proposals. One of the most popular is the adventure devised by John Collins-Black, who at the end of 2024 published a book called There’s a Treasure Insidein which he gives clues to find five chests hidden throughout the United States, valued at more than two million dollars.
In them, there are everything from rare Pokémon cards or pieces of gold to historical objects that were owned by people like Pablo Picasso or George Washington. The book has been a bestseller and has shocked thousands of searchers who have not yet found the treasures.
Collins-Black’s is one of the examples of how this hobby moves the masses, but the world is full of other examples. Closer, in Catalonia, just a year ago, Guillem Sanyes decided to carry out a similar idea and bury chests in his homeland.
But, unlike Collins-Black, to monetize the idea he did not sell books, but instead created a company that could hide a treasure, bury it and charge participants for clues, allowing players to organize themselves into teams to go to look for it.
He also considered it a way to preserve the Catalan language and to make the territory in which he lives known. The next day, at 9 in the morning, I was already at the agency asking if it was possible to do it or not.
And so it was born The Joc del Tresor. In the first edition, whoever signed up and formed a team with friends or family received a map and three initial clues by email. Every Sunday, participants obtained a new key.
The game ended when, based on the riddles, the first team managed to find the coordinates where the treasure was hidden. “Every day, when we returned from work, we spent hours trying to decipher each clue,” explain Baena and Borras. The first edition began on June 18 and ended on September 16 at 4:15 p.m., when one of the 581 teams signed up found the treasure, valued at 5,000 euros.
The second edition, which has not yet started, is inspired by the arrival of the Three Wise Men. For 25 days, from January 6 to the 31st, participants must find three locations each day, guided only by photos.
In each location, the distances are reduced, and from those three locations, which represent the three paths along which the Kings passed, they must reach three houses. If you have followed the path correctly, on January 31 you will be able to find one or all of the locations, where the incense, gold and myrrh are.
“My goal is to offer people an illusion, an experience that normally cannot be achieved,” admits Sanyes. “The excitement of feeling that they are about to find a treasure that they have in their territory and that could be theirs,” he adds.
Enigma 1: Discovering the beginnings
This hobby was born at the end of the 70s and became a mass phenomenon. In part, it was the responsibility of the book Masqueradeby Kit Williams, which sold more than a million copies. It contained paintings in which clues were hidden that led to a real treasure: an 18-carat golden hare that Williams had created and hidden somewhere in Britain.
Masquerade It was the beginning of the trend of solving clues and puzzles to locate a hidden treasure or claim a prize. The phenomenon was so strong that deaths and fights between those competing for rewards were even reported.
A clear example of this boom was also Forrest Fenn’s Treasure: the coveted chest hidden in the Rocky Mountains, in the western United States, by Forrest Fenn, a millionaire antiques collector.
Fenn offered clues to its location in her book The Thrill of the Chase: A Memoirpublished in 2010, which sparked a search that mobilized thousands of people for an entire decade and even caused four deaths. The prize was not found until 2020.
Motivated by Forrest Fenn’s famous treasure hunt, Jon Collins-Black, American musician and entrepreneur, dreamed of creating a more personal and accessible experience.
Your new book, There’s Treasure Insidepublished in October 2024, offers clues to avid ‘treasure hunters’, guiding them on an expedition to find five chests hidden across the United States, each containing items valued at more than $2 million.
Enigma 2: Search and technology
Scavenger hunts have made a resurgence in the 21st century, combining the spirit of the 1970s with today’s technology. Specialized companies have adapted this activity to modern leisure, such as The Joc del Tresor either the popular escape rooms outdoors, also known as street exhausts.
This format conveys the essence of the escape rooms traditional, in which participants solve puzzles in a room to escape or complete a mission, to an outside environment. Thus, players explore neighborhoods, parks or cities while deciphering clues and completing challenges. “We have always done numerous escape roomsan activity that is closely linked to treasure hunts,” say Mónica Baena and her partner, Rafa Borras.
A notable example is Geocats, a project designed for those looking for innovative ways to explore cities through interactive gymkhanas and scavenger hunts.
Its founder, Antonina Orlova, started as a tourist guide in Moscow and, after moving to Barcelona, decided to focus on interactive tourism. “During the activity, people actively discover the city; “The city itself becomes the setting for the game,” he explains.
Orlova highlights that this format encourages a more meaningful experience: “Seeking answers for yourself is not the same as listening to a tour guide. Actively participating helps you learn and remember much more.”
According to the founder, treasure hunts are an original way to discover cities, promoting teamwork and fun while exploring. But this type of activity moves away from the classic game of the 70s in several aspects. In the street exhausts You do not compete against anyone: the objective is to collaborate as a team to overcome the mission.
On the contrary, the beauty of traditional treasure hunts is that they are accessible to everyone and are physically linked to a place where the prize is located. The first to find it takes it, something that does not happen in the escape rooms.
Geocaching, another modern variant, combines GPS technology with treasure hunting, although these have no economic value. Unlike the classic games of the 70s, where the challenge was to solve puzzles without knowing the exact location, in ‘geocaching’ the participants, called ‘geocachers’, have the coordinates of the ‘cache’, a hidden container that contains a record (usually a notebook or guestbook) where players leave their name or message as proof that they have found it.
In parallel, businesses and influencers in many cases also use treasure hunts as a commercial strategy. Nowadays, many shopping centers organize scavenger hunts as part of their marketing strategies or special events. They include clues and hide prizes that may be related to the center’s products or services, or offer discounts and vouchers for participants.
This summer, the influencer Nil Ojeda, with 1,900,000 followers on Instagram and 4,100,000 on TikTok, organized a treasure hunt in 10 Spanish cities where he had the most followers. He himself hid cans full of his brand’s new clothes milfshakes in each city, and announced it through a video on TikTok, generating great expectation among young people and a great stir on social networks.
Enigma 3: Trace Deciphered
The clues were running out, Mónica Baena and Rafa Borras were getting closer and closer to the final coordinate that would lead them to the treasure of the first edition of The Joc del Tresor. They both worked until seven in the evening and feared that another team would arrive earlier at the location they thought was correct.
Guillem Sanyes, the creator of the test, explains that participating in the game defines a lot of people, as it encourages skills such as research, deduction and critical thinking. “It is not a trivial activity; It involves learning about geography, territory and being decisive, knowing how to search for information quickly and compare it, especially at a time when there is so much talk about fake news.”
The last enigma of the game came at 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, at which time they decided to take the car and head to Castellet i la Gornal, a small town in the Alt Penedès region, in Catalonia. “You learn a lot, now I could travel through Catalonia without GPS and draw it,” says Borras.
Faced with uncertainty, they equipped themselves with headlamps and a shovel to unearth the treasure. As they parked, they passed near a vineyard and began to hear noises coming from animals approaching, which forced them to return to their home. For Baena, there was no doubt: “I was sure the treasure was there.”
On Monday morning, after completing their work day, they returned during the midday break and, sure enough, there it was. “The night before we were two meters away from finding him,” says Borras.
The couple was the winner of the first edition of The Joc the Tresor. They climbed to the top of the mountain, where they found some stacked stones and a wooden cross. “We didn’t believe it, it was impressive,” they admit.
“For me, these games represent being a child again, recovering the enthusiasm of doing things and discovering places and stories,” says Baena. With shovel in hand, they began to dig, just like in the movies, to unearth the long-awaited treasure.
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