Today was mountain day. I had no idea Timor-Leste was so mountainous !!! It may as well be the Balkans !!! The area beyond Maubisse looks like Greece or Montenegro or Romania.
This day began at 6am with my second 10km run along the scenic coastline of Dili. Lots of walkers and quite a few joggers. We headed off at 9am going inland with a spectacular mountain rise above Dili with sweeping views. The Catholics built a huge Cathedral at the top of this rise. On the way up is a little village called Dare and it is important. It contains a Memorial built jointly by the Australian and Timorese Governments to comemorate the co-operation, comradery and soldiers lost during WWII when the Australians came to Portuguese Timor to fight the Japanese. This Memorial is a huge exposed balcony overlooking Dili way down below. Several huge banners explain Australia’s involvement and a TV plays s short documentary on the same. The most moving account concerns the so-called “Creados” meaning “Servants” who were in fact 13yr old Timorese boys who helped the Australian Soldiers find their way through the jungle, led them to water and ran errands. This reminded me immediately of the “Fuzzy Wuzzies of Kokoda, the only difference being their ages – the Fuzzies were adult men.
Our next stop was Aileu (Pop 2,788m, Elev 1,122m), which is on a high plateau surrounded by mountains with a huge river flowing through the centre. This place has many fertile fields of cabbage, beans, corn and grazing cattle. The road leading here often looked like parts of the Blue Mountains outside Sydney given there are many gum trees. In 1903, a rebellion staged in Aileu against the colonial rulers failed. In January 1912, it served as a Portuguese base against the rebellion of Manufahi. On August 31, 1942, the town was invaded by Colunas Negras, the Timorese allies of the Japanese invaders. Five Portuguese soldiers, as well as several civil servants and missionaries, were killed. A memorial in Aileu commemorates the massacre today. Indonesian soldiers set up a relocation camp in Aileu for the East Timorese at the end of 1979. At the end of 1999, there were temporary plans to make Aileu the new capital of an independent East Timor. These were rejected in favour of Dili.
Maubisse (Pop 6,229) has no history. We stopped over here for lunch and I purchased a hooded fleecy top for my hike up Mt Ramelau (the highest peak in Timor-Leste) tomorrow early morning.
The road from Maubisse to Hato-Builico is terrible but the journey is simply breathtaking – easily the best drive so far. Huge treeless mountains with craggy rocks towering over green valleys. This area look like many countries in the Balkans !!! After shaking around on this bad road for well over 2hrs just to travel 15km we finally arrived in Hato-Builico, a tiny little village surrounded by majestic mountains, the King of which being Mt Ramelau, the tallest mountain in Timor-Leste at 2,986m. Hato-Builico itself is 2,000m above sea level and it was actually cold. I went for a quick walk to the nearby Catholic Cathedral and then let off Mini (my light, quiet drone) to the delight of 12 primary school aged kids who had followed me back to where we were staying. This often happened in the smaller villages since not many funny looking tourists visit and when they do, they are a real novelty. When kids see you passing in the car or on the street and you wave to them, there faces completely light up – it is not just a token wave but genuine joy. As I was flying my drone above Hato-Builico I lowered the controller so the kids could form a circle around me and see what the drone camera was recording. They yelled with delight and amazement in Portuguese “there’s our school”, “there’s our church” and even the houses of individual people that they knew since one of my flights was a low pass over town. It reminded me of Kokoda when I placed the virtual reality mask of my other drone on the faces of 20 kids which absolutely delighted them. I quickly discovered that drones are a great way to entertain the local kids and there is nothing more satisfying than to see those huge smiles on the faces. There is no internet in Hato-Builico so after eating it was straight to bed for me to get enough sleep for my 230am rise to climb Mt Ramelau the next day.
Enjoy the mountainous highlands of Timor-Leste…
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