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I've fallen in love with East Timor - Part 2 Ben Rashleigh October 2002
OK, Back again. Last time I finished off on Tuesday the 1st of October. I was part way through my PADI open water dive course. Wednesday (2nd) was the same story, just another day of theory and confined water diving. Thursday (3rd) was a fair bit better though – I had my first open water dive, that is, my first dive in the ocean. The dive was at a place called Dili Rock Right. We got to see plenty of coral and all sorts of different fish and marine life. This dive started making the past three days of pool diving and theory worthwhile. After we finished diving, there was more theory, then I noticed my arm was tingling and I had little rash-like bumps appearing on my hand. These are both symptoms of Decompression Sickness, which we had just learnt about. I’m not usually a hypochondriac, but after just reading all about it, I was suitably worried. So were the dive instructors – so I had to sit around for a few hours so they could keep an eye on me and see if I needed to go on oxygen. The tingling disappeared, so we put it down to my wetsuit being too tight and I put the bumps down to a reaction to the sunscreen and the salt water – maybe… It didn’t happen again though. The next day, Friday (4th), we completed 2 open water dives. The first dive was at Dili Rock Left where we had to do an emergency ascent from 10m while exhaling one continuous breath. Then we went back and had a delicious lunch, in comparison to the cheese on bread from the other day, provided by the owners of the dive shop. Then back into our final open water dive at Dili Rock Right before taking the final exam. I quickly skimmed through the text book, did the exam and managed to pull off a 94%. My excuse for the questions I got wrong were that they were trick questions…
That night, both me and Ally, after an ill fated day with a motorbike he had hired, decided that we would head out to the Purple Cow – a restaurant and bar that turns into ‘the spot’ for foreigners on a Friday night. All good intentions, but by the time it was to go – we had both fallen asleep.
Saturday morning (5th) we decided that it would be good to hire some motorbikes and head out east and tour around for a bit. So, we ran around all morning trying to get organised etc.. We had to get bikes, supplies and make sure we had enough cash, as credit card facilities don’t exist in East Timor (very difficult for me!). We eventually left by 3pm and headed to our first stop, Manatutu – a comparatively large costal town.
We made it there just on dusk. We arrived the local church to be greeted by the voices of hundreds of children singing. Sitting out the front of the church, listening to the singing, looking out over the ocean… - this was pretty surreal. We then began the task of finding accommodation. Not easy. First stop, we were told that the church sometimes lets travellers stay – but we were pointed to the local government owned guesthouse – which was closed. Third stop, Copper Inn, was rented out by a group of Japanese NGO (Non Government Organisation). The owner suggested that we go see a local who sometimes rented out a room. We went looking for Mr Migual, which we found and also staying next to him was a Portuguese teacher, Seniór Carlos who helped us negotiate a price of $5US each to stay. We had dinner with Carlos at the local Supa (Soup) restaurant and then sat down and spoke for hours over a few bottles of Angurra – a fortified grape and ginseng drink.
Next morning, Sunday (6th), we had breakfast with Carlos – who I think really welcomed having some foreigners to talk too. We walked around the market – where I bought a heap of roles and bread – That’s another food group I love here, the locals make these little rolls, a bit bigger than a dinner roll. I think they must be some sort of natural yeast sourdough, as they don’t use normal yeast. They only stay fresh for about a day, but they are damn good – especially with pineapple jam! I think I ate hundreds of them.
Anyway, we headed off from Manatutu and arrived in Bacau, East Timor’s second largest city. The first thing we tried to do was get accommodation. First stop, the local hotel which we had read about – closed, there was a death in the family and they were mid way through a wake. So we then went and had a look at the only other accommodation we could find, ‘The Flamboyant’. As the name might suggest, this place was going to cost a bit more than the $5US we had been paying so far – but we thought we would be inquisitive tourists and have a look anyway. $50US per night – a bit above our budget. So it was off to CIVPOL (Civil Police) to find out where else we could stay. Bacau has two town areas, Old Town and New Town. New Town is apparently where there have been a lot a problems lately. UN workers had recently been attacked there. From what we heard, it was because there was a higher presence of pro-Indonesians living there. CIVPOL was situated on the edge of New Town. On the way there I was deliberately ran off the road by a Mikrolet (Mini bus service) and then yelled at by a guy sitting on top of another Mickrolet a few minutes later. In comparison to how friendly everybody else had been so far, this came as a bit of a shock. An Australian police officer at CIVPOL suggested a few places to try for accommodation. The first stop was where the Catholic teachers lived. They were full but we met two girls from Australia who were working in Dili. We then tried the church only to be told that we could stay if we were priests. – unfortunately we forgot to pack our priest clothes… Then, as we were riding around trying to find something else, we noticed a guy on a motorbike following us. We stopped and he tried to look as if he was going somewhere else and not actually following us. Then he came and asked us where we were going. We didn’t tell him (we didn’t know anyway..) and he eventually gave up and left us. By this point we were getting a bit worried so we decided to go down to the beach (about 4km down the hill) to where the Australian police were living.
No one was home, so we went and sat on the beach for a while. I got a bit of much needed sleep and then went for a walk. We then went and saw the group of Australian police to see if they could help us. There was also a catholic sister who was visiting who said she’d be able to help us by talking to the church. After a half hour conversation using about 5 different languages we gave up any hope of staying at the church. We were then pointed in the direction of the Portuguese mission where we were told that they couldn’t help us because it was Portuguese government property and they would have to ask the ambassador for permission… They suggested a place in New Town. We were finally defeated! – we gave up. The Flamboyant at $50US was looking pretty damn good. Air-conditioning, a real bed!, real pillows!, luxury!!! While we were in the ‘handing out money’ mood, we decided to have a nice dinner to go along with it. All in all a good, albeit expensive, end to an otherwise testing day.
Monday (7th) morning we slept in until 9. The lack of roosters and rats makes a huge difference to your sleep… Had a hot shower and went for a buffet breakfast. We both made sure that we got our moneys worth by eating everything they had. I had trouble getting on the bike after that…
We then left Bacau and made our way further east to Los Palos. Along the way we found an amazing, untouched beach before the Los Palos turn off.
On the way to Los Palos, I stopped to take a photo on the side of the road and straight away I was mobbed by a group of adorable children. They were so excited and had so much energy. They all screamed when I showed them their photos on the camera screen.
Then for the first time my bike broke down about 1 km out of Los Palos. I gave it a bit of a rest and it was enough to get me into town. Upon arrival in Los Palos the road was blocked big a big UN truck. The main bridge to get into town didn’t exist – it was in the process of being rebuilt from scratch after the militia destroyed it in 1999. Fortunately we found a detour into town. I took the bike to a mechanic who did all sorts of things to it. When he was done, the bike sounded a lot worse – but it worked. We went to CIVPOL and they directed us to some accommodation at the Welcome Guesthouse for $8US each per night - much easier than the previous day.
As we had plenty of time, we went for a walk through the town. I took a photo of a statue in the middle of the main round-a-bout, then almost instantly about 30 locals just materialised and posed for a photo.
We were then invited to come along to a soccer game between two local teams. Soccer is pretty big in East Timor – most places you got, you can see evidence of this. We watched the soccer game as I spent a good part of an hour on my satellite phone trying to sort out work problems back in Melbourne and also get a later flight home. The soccer game was between one team who was wearing, obviously donated, Greenpeace T-shirts and a team who called themselves ‘Scorpians United Football Club’. The Greenpeace T-shirts won.
We then went for a walk through the rest of the town. Every single person stopped and said ‘botarde’ – which translates to ‘good day’. There was a group of young men sitting on the side of the road singing along to a guitar. There were groups of children playing. Everything seemed to be so right. This was probably one of my favourite parts of the trip.
The next morning (Tuesday 8th) we headed off to Tutuala. We only got to the next town before we had to turn back as Ally was having trouble with his bike. All fixed, we tried again. The road to Tutuala had not been maintained like the roads we had travelled on so far. It was an eroded sealed road covered in rocks and dirt. You would normally require a 4WD to use it – but we decided our little city ‘run about’ bikes would be up for it. I now think I know how to dirt bike ride.
We arrived OK, signed in at CIVPOL and was told that there was no accommodation as the only guesthouse had been booked out by the foreign police manning the CIVPOL office – but we might be able to get a bit of floor somewhere. We rode up the hill towards the guesthouse and then saw the view. Wow! Imagine this; upon a hill at the end on a mountain range looking west along a coast line of hills, trees, white sand beaches, coral, and an ocean of light and dark blue as far as the eye can see. Suffice to say we stopped and I managed to take more photos than I really needed.
We continued up the hill and found that at the top the view was even better. From this point you could see Kisar island (Indonesia) which is about 30km off shore.
We managed to negotiate some accommodation with the care taker of the guesthouse. He offered us the shared toilet room. This basically consisted of a tiled floor, and a bit of shelter – and a squat toilet. We had to pay him $10US for the privilege as well. In hindsight we would have been better of sleeping under the stars on the beach.
We then ventured into the Village. Tutuala is the eastern most village in East Timor. This makes it one of the most remote villages as well. The buildings in Tutuala weren’t destroyed by the militia partly because of the remoteness and also because the Indonesian military ran out of fuel to use to burn the buildings down – when you hear about these things it’s pretty hard to fathom the extent of what took place in 1999.
We found a place to sit down and pretty soon we had some children coming to talk to us.
We managed to get a Tetum (the local language) lesson at the same time from a 20 year old called Jonas.
It was then time to watch the sunset. Once again – Wow! Took way too many photos, again – but it was worth it.
We then met a two Australian archaeologists and an anthropologist who studying some of the local caves. We spoke to them for ages and found out heaps about East Timor along with it’s geology, geography and history.
Because I was still not used to sleeping on cold tiles in a toilet, I didn’t get too much sleep, so I decided to get up before sunrise (Wed, 9th). I had to climb out the window so as not to wake Ally. There is nothing quite like seeing the sun slowly appear over the top of a mountain range spilling fingers of light out through the mist slowly rolling over the surrounding valleys. Of course I took a too many photos again.
We then decided that we would walk down to Valou beach to see Jaco Island (the eastern most point of East Timor). Most people would normally take a 4WD down to the beach because of the road/track conditions. We decided that we would be able to walk the 10km there with no trouble though. After a fairly lengthy walk we got to the beach. We saw Jaco Island, which is a few hundred metres off the coast.
The tide was out, so we could walk out on parts of the reef. The closer you looked at the reef the more marine life you found.
I took some great macro shots of these tiny, brightly coloured fish, which were less than 1cm long. To do this, I had to balance myself and my camera just above the surface of the water for about 10minutes until the fish became used to me being there.
Ally decided to go to sleep for a while, so I went off exploring. I found all sorts of coral, fish, sea snakes, crabs and sea urchins. I once again practiced some macro photography and got some great close-ups.
At midday we began walking back. When we initially thought about walking to Valou beach, I don’t think we considered that if we had to walk 10km there, we would then have to walk 10km back… Over two small mountain ranges, going up and down 30-40° slopes in 35°+ heat, we got a bit tired… We finally made it back to Tutuala a few hours later. We had run out of water and really needed some! All the shops (there were two very small kiosks) were closed. Ally decided he couldn’t walk the last 100m back to our toilet room and decided to sit out the front of one of the shops in protest.
We really needed water, so we had to pack up our belongings and head back to the previous town. We stopped in every small village along the way, but no one had water. We were very close to drinking the non bottled water and risking all sorts of possible diseases, when we finally found a shop with water! We then went back to Los Palos for the night, as Ally’s bike was playing up again.
The next morning (Thursday 10th) we decided that we had run out of time to go to the south coast, so we would have to head back along the north coast – the same way we came. We went to a town called Com first, there was not too much there except for a brand new hotel run by an Australian. It looked OK but was very expensive and the place was covered in signs telling you what you couldn’t do (ie.. No live animals at the bar…). We then headed straight to Manatutu.
We both had bike problems along the way. We were stopping approx. every 20km to suck out the fuel filters. As we got closed to Manatutu we were stopping every 10km, then 5km, then 1km, but we finally got there.
We went to the market and bought some palm spirit for $1. We had dinner at the local soup restaurant – beef, including most parts of the animal… But it was good!
We went back to where we stayed last time we were in Manatutu and spet the night drinking palm spirit mixed with Kretendang (concentrated red bull).
Friday the 11th, we left Manatutu for Dili. We were having a really good run with no bike problems until… about 10km out of Dili, I decided to hit a rock whilst going around a corner at 50km/h. The bike got airborne, but I managed to keep control of it and stopped. I had destroyed the inner tube and put a big dint in the front wheel’s rim. I flagged down a pick up truck full of sand headed to Dili. Between 4 of us, we lifted the bike over the edge of the truck, which was about 3m high! Back in Dili I had to push the bike around until I found a place that could fix the tire. Once fixed, I had to go back to where we were staying and fix up the rest of the bike before we returned them. We took the bikes back to the hire shop and while I was waiting for Ally (he had broken down on the way…), the girl there who couldn’t really speak English kept asking me “When you come to China?”, with a fairly blank look on my face, she then decided to write something down on paper; “When you come to China, you visit” along with her home address and phone number and a smile… Because of this, she didn’t even look at our bikes. We got our deposit back and got out of there!
Then night, we went down to the Purple Cow for dinner where I had a whole char grilled, fresh Red Snapper! Yum! I also attempted to try and get a Bombay Gin and Tonic with fresh lime… - They did well, I got everything except the fresh lime. After a series of them, Ally got tried so we headed home.
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