East Timor

We arrived in Dili early Monday morning eagerly awaiting what was to come and how things would pan out for our first country. Tuesday morning we headed down to pick up our bikes after running around on Monday to get the paper work sorted and have the bikes cleared. Many thanks to Rui in Darwin for his contacts here as I don't think we would have done it so easy without them. Dili still looks a little worse for wear after many years of troubles but the people are the ones who make it a great place to be. Not once did we feel uncomfortable here. Could still have something to do with the large presence of the UN here, there were no shortage of them driving around here owning the roads. In total we only spent 8 days here as we knew we needed to get to Kupang in West Timor to catch our ferry to Ende on the island of Flores. In this time we did manage to make our way east to Com Beach and a village a little further east by the name of Tutuala. The ride was slow going as the roads here are far from being in good condition and most of the time you were lucky to have a road wide enough to fit 2 cars let alone trucks. Could not really say a bad thing about the place, if we were to I guess it was the surprise we had of the cost of everything here. All in all a wonderful place that if we had more time we could have explored more of what this youngest nation has to offer.

Bikes arrived safe and well in Dili just as we had hoped

Unpacking

War memories...

Dili Smoke House where we stayed


Waiting outside the Indonesian embassy


Filling up East Timor style

And the road ends...here.

But then you just take the detour

Cemetery

Com

Some cute little chicks who latched on to me

Minutes before a buffalo had been slaughtered on the beach...

Many animals here look very undernourished

Lookout out from Christo Rei, Dili

Finally trying a drink from a coconut, not that impressed

Many a road hazard here

Another poor village but the locals were so friendly

Buying some goodies from the locals