We left Ainaro and caught a bus to Maubisse, a town a couple of hours away. We were expecting the bus ride to be hot and squishy but the bus was only half full so it was quite comfortable, OK, so the seats were made for Timorese-sized bums but it was still a good trip compared to what we'd been expecting.
We had planned to climb the highest mountain in East Timor, Mt Ramelau, but it was closed so we settled on just visiting the nearby town of Maubisse instead. While we were eating lunch at Maubisse I saw the tip truck below go by - with a pony as one of the passengers!
It was market day so we saw quite a few ponies. They don't seem to have too hard a life - they just get used every now and then to carry things around. These Timor Ponies look very much like foals, but Aussie legend has it that they're tough as nails.
We had heard of a place to stay called 'The Pousada". We slogged our way up a hill to it and it was amazing. It was an old Portuguese house perched on top of a hill with stunning views.
Our room in the main house was large, clean and comfortable. Heaven!
The grand old house was surrounded by gardens and people come to visit it on day trips.
For a while we were the only ones there, but then a German backpacker, Andreas, turned up. The three of us were the sole occupants and we had a good night chatting.The views were sensational!
In the evening it got cool as we were up in the mountains. Dinner was expensive and uninteresting (they knew that we didn't want to slog back down the hill to the town). There was a bar and I spied Cointreau on the shelf (my favourite drink). We asked the price and the guy said $5. John asked how much we got for $5. The guy obviously had no idea so he pulled out a champagne glass and said it would be one of these. It must have contained about 7 shots! We kept straight faces and said that would be fine. John changed his order and got one too. One glass was enough to satisfy any Cointreau craving for a long time!
The next morning was cool, misty and beautiful. Again, the views were amazing.
We would love to have stayed longer here but there was no internet and we needed to contact people so we headed off. We waited for a bus but there didn't seem to be any coming. There were a number of anggunas though. These are tray utes with seats in the back. One guy was trying to get us to come with him. When John said we wanted shade over us he rigged up a tarp! We decided we needed to experience all the forms of transport so we jumped in. Again, it wasn't crowded.
We travelled along happily, admiring the amazing views, stopping to pick people up occasionally. At one stop, a guy waited - with his pig! To my amazement, the 'bus boy' jumped out and loaded the pig into the back of the ute. I would have thought that loading up pigs wasn't part of the job description but it obviously must be! They tried to fit the pig under the seat but it squealed and carried on so they let it stay on the tray.
A couple of times, the pig escaped its ropes and wandered around the vehicle unitl the guy put a rope around it again. It was really well behaved and the owner kept patting it. I was just relieved it didn't wee all over our packs!
Of course, a guy got on with his rooster too.
We were fairly comfy, we just had problems with those tiny little seats again......
A lot of the country we drove through looked very Australian - gum trees on red dirt. I think the gum trees are native here.
The busboy had a unique dust protection system.......
This is my pack and legs. My bag is normally navy blue. My legs look very ghostly. When we arrived in Dili, the driver stopped just so everyone could jump out and dust themselves down.
We staggered back to our hotel in Dili and, needless to say, both had long showers!
We had a couple of days to spend in Dili so we set about exploring it. Keeping with the transport theme, we always were amazed at the huge sun visor stickers that taxis have. They block out half of the windscreen!
Another day we caught this taxi. He could see nothing out of his rear-view mirror......
........and if he could, he wouldn't be able to see through the back window anyway!
And for a bit of fanciness, he had a flag pinned to the roof and scent sachets hanging from it!
We wanted to vist Arte Moris, the art school where the three visiting artists at Ainaro came from. It was housed in an old, run-down building. The whole place had an air of disrepair. Many sculptures were made from recycled materials. Courtney, you would have loved it!
Gil made this amazing sculpture from thongs washed up on the beaches.
The decrepit ceiling of the art gallery was just as interesting as the art works!
Many artworks were politically-based. The conflict between Australia and East Timor over the location of the maritime boundary between the two countries featured strongly. (The division was strongly in favour of Australia. Not surprisingly, the Timorese weren't happy about Australia claiming all the oil and gas that is located far closer to East Timor than Australia. This boundary line was recenty renegotiated in a much fairer way.)
Gil met us and showed us around.
Some artworks were striking.
We were on a roll now with public transport so we caught a microlet, a local mini bus. These always have loud doof-doof music blaring from them. They're really cheap though. Once again though, we had problems with the small size of them. We couldn't sit up straight!
On a hill on a peninsula near Dili stands Christo Rei, a huge statue of Jesus. The views from the statue were great!
I like the Timorese flag.
Dili must be the smallest capital city I've ever seen. It never seems busy. The traffic can be a bit all over the place but when there aren't that many vehicles on the road, it doesn't seem to matter so much. It's a quiet, spread-out place, full of Aussies who are usually volunteering in some way. It's so Aussie that you can even buy Vegemite from the supermarkets!
It's modern in lots of ways yet third world in so many more. Anyone want to be an OH&S inspector?
So long from Dili!
Heather and John.
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