Atauro Island

29 June 2012

The island of Atauro lies some 30km north of Dili, on a good day you can actually see it from the city. There are a few ways to get there, some cost five dollars (the ferry, only on Saturday and tickets are sold out in half an hour) some cost 45 dollars (water taxis, run by Aussies). Another way is to get there with the fishermen.

Basically, you go to the beachfront in Dili, ask a local if he can take you across, discuss the price and hop on. Don’t expect a yacht or a ferry though, but more like a canoe or a, well a floating log of some sort: there’s a main hull, about ten meters long, and half a meter wide, and two bamboo branches on either side, to maintain floatation. All tied up with what looks like shoelace. That’s it. Oh yeah, and a 15cv engine.

Then, once your backpack is secured along with the rice bags, flour bags, boxes of food, dried wood, etc etc in the hull, a few boards are placed on top to provide with seating and in you go. I stopped counting after the 25th passenger got in. Oh yeah and two chickens.

And off we went. There was no wind and a very calm sea so, aside for the few splashes, we didn’t take much water in. One of the crew members was using a bucket to empty whatever water he felt was becoming a danger for us. Three hours later, we reached the island’s shores. On the way, the morning coffee took its toll on Claire’s bladder so she relieved herself in the hull, and made everyone laugh a lot. Apparently, it’s a very common practice; everyone looked away and acted natural.

But three hours on a tiny raft gets you soaked, so as the wind picked up, people improvised ways to get warm. The owner of the two chickens took Claire in her arms to warm her up, while the crew kept drinking palm wine. Within ten minutes they were drunk, and sang their traditional songs.

Ashore, everybody quickly disembarks, while twenty more people hop in and the boat sails the other way, back to Dili. We made our way to the single restaurant on the island for lunch. There’s only four dishes on the menu: spaghetti, gnocchi’s, pizza and pizza. The owner is no less than the local priest, from Italy, who passed on his love for the cuisine to his three local cooks. Another normal thing for here, an Italian priest runs a pizzeria…

The island’s only road runs for about twelve kilometres. It’s in a reasonable condition, the potholes aren’t much than a foot deep, and the local taxis, the “touktouk”, make the ride at decent speed, well you know, for Dili’s standards, the road aren’t any worse than on the mainland. Touktouks are a hybrid vehicle, the front is half a motorcycle, and the back has two benches on a flat tray. So the touktouk took us (no pun intended) to Barry’s Place. Barry is an Aussie who runs the only resort on the island, with his wife and extended family. The huts and the main building are all built using traditional methods, the toilets and shower use bore water, and the places employs a team of locals only. So it’s all eco-friendly. Both Barry and his wife are extremely friendly, and the resort is alive with their twins (4 years old), their niece (about three years old) and the dogs. The huts are right on the beach, so at night all we heard was the sound of the waves splashing.

At dinner we meet Victor, currently on a backpacking tour of Asia, he used to be a chef on an Australian expedition in Antartica for a year. (Antartica, my dream…) We also met Barbara and Richard, sharing their adventures of their own expedition, backpacking from Europe to Australia through the Middle-East in the seventies. Different times but similar dreams, forty years later we’re doing the same trip the other way. They confirmed my original assessment, the Middle-East is a beautiful place but sometimes harsh and dangerous. Worth the detour anyways, they said.

During the conversation with Barb and Richard, we decide to accompany them the next day on the hiking trip to the top of the island, Mount Manucoco (997m). Up at 6AM, Barry organised for all of us a packed lunch and some hiking shoes for Claire. Of we went, the four of us, with two guides. And f** me I don’t think I’ve ever sweated that much in my life. The climb is a continuous steep climb, with no flat bits whatsoever. You just look at the summit, and go up, and up, and up. First casualty was Richard who couldn’t take it anymore after well over an hour of ascend. Soon, the temperature rose quickly with the sun, but the view kept on improving as we went up. But damn this is hard yakka. I never thought I’d got this far with my bad knees and broken back, sadly though I had to give up just a few hundred meters off the top. Just couldn’t go on. Barbara gave up as well, and as we shared our lunch, Claire went up with the two guides, happy as the mountain goat as she is.

Well done! She deserved her one hour massage back at the resort, complimentary of Barry’s employee. Too bad it’s female only, I desperately needed one too. Instead, Barry and I had our beer while the women had their back rubbed. Life’s hard in the tropics I tell ya!

Since the fishermen’s boat leaves at three in the morning, and we both need a good night sleep, Claire and I decided to stay for another day, and enjoy the snorkelling instead. We took one of the local canoes along with Guy, a young fellow from Melbourne and his dad, and went exploring the local reef. It’s well worth the paddle, the water is as clear as tap water and the corals, fishes and sea life as abundant as what we’re used to in Noumea. Well, that doesn’t tell you much, fellow readers, but let’s just say it’s breathtaking (no pun intended, you know, snorkelling, breathtaking … oh I’m so funny sometimes).

Lazy afternoon and yet another awesome buffet, with local food provided by Barry’s staff, and another great evening spent in great company. Well, if it wasn’t for “The Dude” it would have been but his complaining and campaigning on foreign powers and various freedom fights drove most of the people away, back to their huts. Poor Barry had to politely endure the nonsense, while we escaped The Dude’s annoying presence. Well, he does have a point, when it comes to the causes he was fighting for, but it’s just the way he talks about it, then complaints just about anything, that just drove me away. Anyways, as I was discussing Australia’s immigration policies with Richard, a stealth helicopter, most likely from the Australian army, flew by the camp, not higher then fifteen meters, all light off, using the inboard radar only. They seem to have similar exercises often, but it’s a very painful reminder of the Indonesian invasion for the local population. Tss tss Australia, you should know better!

Saturday mornings is the main event on the island, all fishermen and producers gather up for the weekly market on the beach and exchange their goods with the tradesmen from the mainland. A good opportunity for us to take some pictures and to walk through the stalls while we wait for the ferry that takes us back to Dili.

At 3:30PM, the ferry leaves, taking onboard whoever was lucky enough to buy a ticket, though it’s less crowded than on the way in apparently. And some 400 passengers share the deck with chicken, goats, various goods, cars and scooters. Three hours later we reached Dili, but no Troopy to be found on the docks yet.

Distance today: 0km, total: 20211km.