Articles from this Category
27 June 2013
Above: Typical scene on the way to the border. The minibus picked me up at 0845, a little later than the time I had been given. I had been waiting since 0800 as I’ve had early pickups as well; one never knows as they go around town collecting their prebooked customers.We headed west on the […]
26 June 2013
Above: There weren’t any four-legged passengers today but not all two-legged ones need a seat. Heading back to Dili The weather wasn’t warm enough for me to try out the spring-fed swimming pool. So I hopped on the mikrolet to take me to Kota Baru (new town) to catch the bus back to Dili. Despite […]
25 June 2013
Paolo and I shared a ride with some others in a taxi to the bus station by the beach, to take the bus to Baucau. We waited on the bus for about half hour for it to fill and finally set off around 0915. This was a proper bus rather than truck and the road […]
24 June 2013
Sarah and I had breakfast of bread rolls and coffee before walking to the market where we boarded an angguna which departed immediately. The ride took 4h15 like the journey up. The difference was that it started raining halfway down and the roads turned to mud. I hadn’t even noticed yesterday that they were unsealed. […]
23 June 2013
I wanted to go to Maubisse to see a bit of the Timor Leste highlands. Sarah, Anton and Paolo had the same idea so we shared a taxi to the angguna (truck with bench seats down the side) station near the Halilarang market. We were lucky to get an angguna immediately but all the bench […]
22 June 2013
I woke to the sound of falling rain. It was bucketing down. It was also the day of the Dili Marathon and our boat trip to Atauro, a nearby island that’s supposed to be great for snorkelling and diving. Incidentally, it is largely Protestant (like Indonesian Christians) rather than Catholics like East Timorese. I decided […]
21 June 2013
Exploring Dili As I hadn’t really explored Dili yet, I started in the morning with a walk to the nearby sights. First up was the Cathedral officially opened by Pope John Paul. In Indonesian, “Pope” appears to be “Sri Paus” which in Malay kinda suggests a beautiful whale? Next up was the Presidential Palace, donated […]
20 June 2013
Backside of Jesus I had heard that diving in this new country was good because during the Indonesian occupation, people didn’t have access to explosives so they couldn’t fish with dynamite. So much of the coral is unspoilt. So I wasn’t disappointed with the coral on my first (and only) dive in Dili at the […]
20 June 2013
Today, I dived the Backside of Jesus (that’s the name of the divesite behind Cristo Rei). The coral was good supposedly due to restrictions on explosives during the Indonesian occupation, meaning that people couldn’t fish with dynamite. But there wasn’t much fish of interest. You can read about my dive here. I’ve been too spoilt […]
19 June 2013
Flying to Dili I had set the alarm for just before 0600 and I managed to down a muesli and coffee before the shuttle picked me up for the airport. I got there before check-in had opened and I waited for a while. The check-in process was slow as some people had lots of luggage. […]