20th - 24th January 2012
We approached Dili westwards from along the North Coast, what a spectacular view, we flew in low over white gold beaches the sea a pale turquoise near to the shore and a deep sapphire blue further out, the hills were green and the airport, tiny. Timor-Leste's largest airport is actually in Baucau the principal base for the earlier Portuguese colonials I haven't seen it, I doubt I will (in this trip) but I bet that Dili's airport is the most beautiful, the slim runway is surrounded by green fields ringed with coconut palms and at the end is the ocean. We disembarked from the plane into the strong sunlight and made our way indoors collecting our visas on arrival and having a chat with the passport control lady who was insanely friendly and didn't look at all old enough to have the four children she claimed to have. We left the taxi drives behind and walked the 500m to the main road to catch a microlet.
The Portuguese may have been around for a while previously (Portuguese is still spoken) but the Indonesians were here last, only for about twenty years or so but they left plenty of bridges and influenced the public transport system, microlets are left over from their stay. Timor-Leste only gained it's independence from Indonesia in 2002, around that time it wasn't exactly visitor friendly but in most places it's been fairly safe to travel since then. Great for the Timorese and great for us. We ended up catching a microlet already crammed with school kids on their way home, Djalma spoke with a young teenage girl who was keen to practise the little Portuguese she knew, calling us Mister and Missus Beautiful (very charmingly in English!). We got off at our stop and then walked straight past the only backpacker joint in the capital. Excellent, retracing our footsteps we called back and sorted ourselves out with a couple of beds in the only dorm room, it smelt of feet and one of the beds had an uncomfortable joke for a mattress, it cost us $12 each. I wasn't exactly feeling the budget love right there. We dropped our things, claiming our beds and went for a stroll round town, trying to find an affordable room with a bit of privacy (when it's baking hot it's not pleasant to wear much to bed much less in a room full of strangers), we didn't find anything under $40, feeling royally cheesed off and not looking forward to a night breathing in someone else's sweaty innersoles I resigned myself to at least one night there. Walking through town was a surreal experience, had we visited without any knowledge I wouldn't have labelled Dili as a city much less the capital, the place is tiny – well the country is tiny – and there was hardly any buzz, most of the shop fronts were closed, we arrived on a Friday, things should have been happening!
We found an open restaurant and got ourselves large helpings from the Padang (Sumatran) style restaurant.
We got up early the next day and rented out bicycles. How I adore cycling, especially on flat roads, I know I know, such a cheat! The sun was out, we took our snorkelling gear with us and followed the road West out of Dili. The road followed the coast and was fairly flat, well paved and full of twists and turns, each bend displaying more gorgeous coastline. We cycled on further than we'd planned but as the road started to go down we turned back, so we wouldn't have to cycle uphill for longer than we had to – the sun was baking. We retraced our tyre prints and stopped at Dili rock where parked our bikes under a tree and took our gear out for it's first real test.
We were in the water for about half an hour, the coral just offshore was beautiful but difficult to see because our masks kept on misting up, we ended up coming back in when we realised that the small stinging sensations we were experiencing were coming from jellyfish the size of walnuts, I made a beeline for shore trying, unsuccessfully, not to panic. Feeling much refreshed from our little dip we generously reapplied our sun-cream and headed back towards Dili. We stopped along the way for some Isotonic drinks and headed up a small hill where a cemetery overlooked the sea.
The walk to the top wasn't long but the sun was baking us from the head down and it was short but heavy going. The graves were beautiful and the smell of melted candle wax hung in the air, further on through the tangle of gravesides the hill climbed a little and displayed views out over the sea and also the airport.
We ate some crackers, drank the last of our water and enjoyed the breeze. We stopped at the pier which was also supposed to be good for snorkelling but all that Djalma could find was sand and the odd mussel so we left it. Cycling back into town we decided to stay in the dorm room another night – plenty of people had left and freed up a comfortable bed next to mine – and after a much needed shower we headed to the beach for dinner.
All along the beach makeshift stalls were set up selling barbecued fish and chicken with small packets of yellow rice and the occasional corn-on-the-cob, we got a couple of beef skewers and some rice and tucked in, most of my beef was sent flying, thoroughly chewed, to the cute beach dogs.
That evening the heavens opened and I had to rescue my dripping wet clothes and bikini from the washing line outside, the rain continued unabated all through the night and didn't stop until the morning. We decided to cancel the expensive diving trip to Atauro Island that we had booked on the way back from our cycling trip west, instead we lay in bed until late morning. We indulged in coffee with our crackers for breakfast and watched Family Guy and used the slow wifi, hunger didn't take long to strike despite our nutritious breakfast and we walked back to the Padang restaurant and loaded up on good, relatively cheap, food before walking around town. We spent the whole afternoon on our feet enjoying the feeling of a real Sunday, for so long we've been in places that Sunday is just another day of the week, here it's one of rest and churchgoing.
We strolled along the beach front past coconut sellers and people selling small hoops of not-too-fresh-fish and came across the daily market. Vendors were just kicking back with their fresh vegetables sitting nicely in little piles, I even saw a Nun doing her shopping, after so many monks she seemed impossibly exotic to me. We turned left up a road and headed away from the sea and wandered along the roads passed people doing their Sunday thing. It was one of the nicest things we did in Dili, the charm of the city definitely doesn't lay in it's “sights” but in the people, kids waved hello and shouted 'Malay!' (which means foreigner) and everyone we passed said boa tarde (good afternoon) it was very civilised, like England thirty years ago when it was polite to say hello to everyone and not considered weird or unnecessary as it is today.
Microlets steamed passed with several boys hanging out the door and children ran in a small river which ran next to the road. Everything was relaxed and easy going, we saw big white smiles everywhere we looked and kids begged to have their pictures taken, screaming with delight when we did. We sped up our leisurely pace to make it in time for mass at the large Catedral de Dili passing the Santa Cruz Cemetery on the way. The place was packed with graves painted in all shades of pastel and decorated with profusions of plastic flowers.
We made it to the cathedral well in advance of the service and ended up waiting for an hour for everything to start. It gave us plenty of time to relax in our pew by the open door and watch all the well dressed families enter the church in their Sunday best with hair neatly combed and shoes nicely shined. We got plenty of wide eyed attention but it was all very quiet, mainly young children twisting round in their seats to have a good look at the “malays”. When the service did eventually start the music was so loud that my brain took about five minutes before it began throbbing so we left through the side door, leaving behind a full church listening to the choir at full blast.
We walked back to Dili Backpackers Hostel and rented out our bikes again this time loading them up with our bags and taking them over to Lena's Home stay and our own private room! We found it the previous day and despite warnings from the woman at the hostel that it was a “short term” hotel we saw nothing to worry about and quite happily checked into our air-conditioned little room which cost us less than two dorm beds. Result. We walked back to the beach for a fish dinner, getting two small fish and some rice, my lips had caught the sun while cycling (as well as my back through my shirt) and I decided to forego the chilli, so my dinner tasted very bland.
As Djalma was paying for our little dinner a small girl of about seven gave me a big smile and said hello, she was obviously looking for cans so I left her to it, something made me turn back and I saw her eating the scraps of food left on our plates. It made my heart break a little, over the last year and a bit we'd been through some poor places where we'd seen some skinny little children (parts of India notably) but there was something about this hungry little girl who'd given me such a big smile, asking for nothing – no begging, that really got to me. Djalma and I spoke about it on the way back to our room and decided that we should find a charity to give some money to – neither of us like giving money out on a small scale, I don't think it can do that much to really alleviate or change a situation and some of the charities in Timor-Leste really make a difference. I also decided that if I saw her again (or someone like her) I would be buying them dinner.
We picked up some water from the guys with the mobile drinks stands that line many of the roads in the city and went to bed after a couple of episodes of Dexter.
We took the bikes out again the next day, leaving later than we'd planned to, our room was so cold from the air-con that it was nice to huddle under the covers and ignore our 5am alarm. After breakfast, a fried egg sarnie! and a coffee we hit the road mid morning, got our photos taken for the visa applications (we still had plenty of shots but the Indonesian embassy wanted ones with a red background), got some biscuits and a half melted chocolate ice-cream cone and then headed East along the coastal road out of town.
We passed some signs warnings about hungry alligators but didn't any sign of them, thankfully. We twisted and turned with the road and ended up at the little beach before the Christ Statue on Cape Fatucama. It was gift from the Indonesians in 1988 and it's 27m height represented the 27 provinces of Indonesia, it's meant to echo the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro and I must say it looks pretty damn cool even though the coast is lacking in sugar loaf mountains etc. We laboured up the many steps to the top where there was a gorgeous breeze made even more gorgeous by the abundance of sweat we had worked up on the way there.
We clambered out to some rocks and enjoyed some fantastic views to the North, of the same beaches we flew over on the way in. Djalma took my picture in a mini Russian style photo shoot (we weren't there for the full hour of picture taking for a full Russian style shoot) and then we walked down a small dirt trail to the Jesus Backside Beach.
Yes that really is the name of this gorgeous stretch of beach. My back was tender from the sun so I had already decided not to go swimming in the sea (salt-water on burnt skin is horrendously itchy). We had the beach to ourselves and while Djalma swam up and down the stretches of coral I strolled up and down the beach taking photos and keeping an eye on him – a task made much easier by the big red dry bag floating on the surface. The sky decided to spit and there was a little wind which kicked up some sand but it soon died down and we decided to try our luck with the road following the Cape. Unbeknown to us, huge sections of it had washed into the sea, fortunately for us all of it was passable with the tide out and a little climbing.
It really brought me back to Earth to see something as solid as a road just gone, it seems unthinkable, but I guess nothing is permanent, especially not with cement that looks like sand held together with spit and a prayer! We crossed over the first bit and walked along a section of road that was, mainly, still standing. On a large outcrop of rock a couple of guys with rods were patiently fishing, a little further on there was no road to speak off and only what looked like some very dangerous swimming (not possible with my beloved camera – our “dry bag” is more of a wet bag) and climbing up and down sharp slippery rocks. We watched some boys climb across to our side and followed their steps the other way, it was surprisingly do-able even if we did caught unawares by a few big waves. It was about that time that we were both thankful for our new flip-flops, the knock-off foam fakes would never have got us across, the good rubber soled Havaianas saw us in good stead and we didn't slip once.
It was actually quite a lot of fun with all the climbing, Djalma took good care of me, pointing out different routes but I was in my monkey zone and didn't really need them, still it's always nice to have a strong capable man about!
The road continued for a few more metres and then we had to climb round the marble streaked limestone/coral rocks which lead round to the proper road, we knew as soon as we saw a parked scooter that we didn't have far to go. We collected our bikes and after a series of photos of the welcome sign (in all of them I am pulling the same face but the picture is taken from a slightly different angle – they look ridiculous) we sped homeward needing to drop off our bikes before 5.30pm. On our way back from the hostel we stopped at the playground we had done sit-ups (me) and chin-ups (Djalma) at a couple of days ago. Again we attracted a small crowd of kids who after spying my camera wanted their photo taken. I obliged and watched them chase tyres round the pavement while Djalma helped the couple of intrepid boys who wanted to do spins on the bars like him in-between doing his own. We said goodbye to the little cuties and walked back to our home stay. We showered, ate some uninspired beef rendang, worked on photos, watched Dexter and went to sleep.
The following day, Tuesday, was earmarked for Embassy duty. We took our handwritten letters, forms and red background photos to the Indonesian Embassy and waited in line, it took two hours for us to hand in and pay for our visa applications, and that meant two hours for me to day dream about all the different clothes I want when we stop travelling and just enough time for Djalma to find us a scooter at a decent rate. Previous searches for a scooter had only turned up some rather expensive offers but he persevered and got us a damn good deal. By a damn good deal I mean only cheap for Timor-Leste, we would have considered the daily rental price of $18 day light robbery (you can usually get it for less than $4 per day for periods of a week or more in most other areas in SE Asia). We had already repacked our bags and left the bulk of our clothes and toiletries with Lena, taking only what we needed for the road. Before we left town we had a big lunch at the Padang restaurant and bought onward tickets for Kupang, Indonesia. Duties over, the open road beckoned and we finally started out on our 'East of Dili' road trip. Joy!
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