Like 3000m high! hahah
Just a warning first, there are heaps of pics in this update, but most are in the second half of the blog, so hang in there and it will be worth it!
Its been a while since I wrote anything here, I got Nemo to
do the last blog so it would probably be close to a month since I wrote here. Unfortunately
that means that I’ve got heaps and heaps to write about. I’ve got to tell you about our two weeks back
in Dili, trips back to Same, Maubisse, Team Ramelau, our private audience with
the US ambassador the motorbike and our new house. As always I will try and
keep it short, but we will see how we go.
So it was a few weeks ago now but Nemo and I managed to get
a week and a half together back in Dili. At that point we had been in Same for
about 3 weeks, so I was about ready to go and get my fair share of creature
comforts and watch a game of footy. We watched 3 games of footy that weekend,
all absolute belters, we saw Tom Hawkins sink the hawks after the siren, the
pies hold on to win by less than a goal and unfortunately saw the bombers go
down by less than a goal as well. Still was good to watch 3 ripping games of
footy. We also watched a lot of the Olympics, basically we spent every night at
the pub watching some form of sport or another, it was just the r&r I
needed.
We were lucky enough to spend most of the time we were in
Dili staying with Tasneem, a friend of mine from work. Her husband is 2IC at
the US Embassy and as such they have an amazing house. I had driven past their
place a few times before but I actually didn’t think it was anybody’s house, it
looks like a mansion. It has massive living areas, a huge backyard covered in
grass (which was one of only a handful of times I had seen grass since coming
to Timor), air conditioning in every room, security guards on the 24hr a day
monitored gate, their own personal driver, cleaner, gardener, the place even
has a full size tennis court! But that wasn’t the best part of their house,
besides all the cool things it was what their house was decorated with that
made it really memorable. Tasneem and Scott have lived all over the world,
Cameroon, Ghana, Costa Rica amongst other places, and every piece of their
furniture they have comes from somewhere in their travels, all of it a piece of
culture from around the globe. It was truly special staying with them in their
house, not to mention they would have to be the most generous hosts I have ever
stayed with, nothing was too much
trouble and everything was their pleasure.
Not only did they collect ornaments from around the world
they also collected cats. Tasneem has a real soft spot for cats, she has five.
All of them had a special story from where they had saved them from. The ginger
cat for example, they were at a restaurant in Cameroon, sitting down for
dinner, when they asked what sort of meat was being served on the kebabs and
the man pointed to the scrawny orange cat in the corner, so they asked him if
they were serving cat on the kebabs, to which the man replied, not cat, that
cat! She was horrified so she paid them for the orange tabby and took it home,
where it now lives happily, slightly overweight and happy as. All of the cats
have similar stories of being saved from death and taken in. She has 2 cats
from Ghana, 1 from Cameroon, 1 from Costa Rica and 1 from Timor, the Timorese
cat stays outside, it doesn’t get along well with the others.
Anyway after a fantastic week and a half in Dili I headed
back to Same, Naomi had to stay for an extra week so I hitched a ride with a
few guys from the local Red Cross and off we went. They told me that we were
going a slightly different way as they had to go and see someone first. Turns
out the person they had to see was about an hour east out of DIli, towards
Bacau, which suited me as I hadn’t been out that way yet. I asked them how long
it would take to get to Same, if it was going to be longer or shorter than the
other way, to which they told me it was about the same. Well they stopped and
saw their friend for about half an hour and then we hit the road properly. It
was really good because I got to see a few of the other districts that I hadn’t
seen yet. We went through Mana-Tutu, close to Viqueque and then along the
southern coast for a while. All of that was great, except for the fact that it
wasn’t a 5 hour drive like it normally is from Dili to Same, it was a 9 hour
drive! At about the 6 hour mark I kept asking them how much longer it would be,
to which they replied 1 hour, then an hour later I asked again, the reply
again, 1 hour, and again with the same result. It was a great drive, even if it
did take all day and some of the night.
This weekend just gone Nemo organised for the two of us and
a few of our friends to get together and go climb Mt Ramelau. Mt Ramelau is the
tallest mountain in East Timor, actually the whole of Timor, Indoneasia’s part
of the Island doesn’t have anything taller than it either. The peak sits just
under 3000m above sea level, I think its 2968m and right on top of it is a
statue of the Virgin Mary, I actually found out last night that the peak of
Ramelau is also the highest point in the Portuguese Empire, in Portugal or any
other Portuguese colony there isn’t a higher place.
The highest point of the Portuguese empire! First pic is it at dawn, the next about an hour after
Anyway, Nemo, Karen, Paul, Dani, Mim and Kristov were in
Dili, so they hired cars and the plan was to meet me in Maubisse, which is
about half way between. That meant I had to get from Same to Maubisse solo,
which wasn’t going to be that easy. I tried and failed at finding a lift in a
car with someone going to Dili that day, so I was down to public transport, one
of my colleagues at work was nice enough to offer to get up Saturday morning,
go down to the bus stop and try and organise me a lift. So once I was packed
and ready on Sat morning I walked up the road to where the busses stop. Kitu
(the guy I work with) found me and told me that there aren’t any busses going
through Maubisse today, but he had found me a man on a motorbike that was
willing to take me on the back of his bike. While I was keen to get there, 2 or
3 hours on the back of a bike with my massive backpack that weighs about 3
tonne wasn’t what I had in mind. Luckily just has I was hoiking my leg over the
bike a bus drove past, Kitu launched himself out in front of it and asked the
driver where they were going…..Maubisse. Kitu threw my bags and me into the
bus, which was packed, but being a Malae people moved around me and I managed
to score a seat. Next stop Maubisse!!!! Or so I thought…..
While we did eventually get there, we spent the next hour or
so driving around Same picking up people, bags of rice, chickens and even a
pig. When we pulled over I saw the pig, actually it was more like a hog, the
thing was huge! I was trying to manoeuvre myself in the back of the bus to get
a photo of the huge animal. It was lying down on its side, with both sets of
legs tied together with a big bit of wood slid in the middle so that it could
be carried. Which is what 4 men started doing, which kind of rushed my shot of
the animal, but then I realised that they were lifting the beast on top of the
bus! It was tied to the roof right at the back, above my head, where it
proceeded to screech and scream for the entire journey, mix that in with the
loudest sound system heard since my days of cutting bog laps of the Fremantle cappuccino
strip when I was 17, the 20 odd chickens/roosters and up to 40 people, the bus
ride was fairly interesting. Seriously though besides the noise just avoiding
the cock fights was a job in itself, at one point there were 2 roosters under
the back seat, which I was sitting on. Every time we went over a bump they
would be thrown into the bottom of the seat, blame each other for the knock on
the head and go at it like…..well 2 cocks! Because I was sitting on the seat
above them and my legs and feet were in the middle of the arena I was getting
bitten and scratched like it was going out of fashion.
You have to try and imagine how cramped this bus was, I
counted 24 seats, there were at least 35 at all times and up to 40 people on
the bus. So on the backseat where there should have been 4 people there were 6
including me; people were sitting in the isles, standing with one foot inside
the bus the rest hanging outside the bus, there was a little man sitting in the
isle resting his back against my legs. So when these roosters were biting,
through reflex I was jerking my legs up into the air, this was pissing a lot of
people off. Before they thought to move the chickens we tried a reshuffle on the
back seat, but somehow, I’m still not sure exactly how, but my 1.5L drink
bottles lid came off and spilled more than half of it all over the back seat.
So while in the end they moved those roosters to under someone else’s seat due
to my complaining the entire back seat ended up sitting on a wet seat for the
next 2 hours, the locals were even less happy about that than they were about
my whining about the roosters.
The rooster at my feet, which ended up under my seat biting me!
My view when I got on the bus, which is relatively empty compared to how it ended up!
I ended up getting to Maubisse about 4 hours before Nemo and
the rest of team Ramelau, luckily I had packed my kindle, which is getting a
trashing btw, Im on track for 52 books in the year at this early stage. I
headed up to the famous Maubisse pousada (Portugese for Hotel) for some lunch,
a look at what is supposed to be an amazing view and maybe a coffee while I
read my book.
Walking up the road to the Pousada, note the lovely candy apple coloured house on the left
Turns out there wasn’t anyone up there, was weird, literally
all the lights were on, the doors open, but no one was home. I was there for 4
hours, tourists came and went, but not a single person who worked there came or
left, was bizarre. So I didn’t eat anything, but I did pull up a chair, took in
the view and devoured a fair bit of my book, couldn’t think of a better place
to have done it in either, take a look!
The Pousada at Maubisse
The view off one of the sides
View of the centre of Moubisse from the Pousada
Moubisse's hillside cemetary
Once the rest of the gang got there we headed off to Hatubulico,
which is a town at the base of Mt Ramelau and where Mim lives with her husband
Damien. As far as towns go that we have been to so far this would be about as
small as I’ve seen. While there are a lot of random 1 or 2 hut villages all
over the place, as far as major towns go this was easily the smallest. It did
have a pousada in which we stayed the night along with a whole bunch of other
climbers but besides that it had a church and a whole bunch of huts. Almost
forgot to mention, it had solar powered street lights throughout the town……That
was one of the stranger things I have seen in Timor, one of the most remote
villages that we have visited and it had solar powered street lights.
Apparently there was a music festival in Hatubulico a few years ago, which was
supposed to be an annual event, so someone spent a lot of money installing
them, but the festival only happened that once, so now a lot of them are either
not working or go on and off when they please.
Pics from the drive from Maubisse to Hauterbulico
Pics of the solar powered street lights, the second pic is the oval they used for the music festival
So we stayed at the pousada, it’s about as close to the base
of the mountain that you can get, they have nice beds, cook you dinner and you
can hire a local to act as a guide and walk you up the mountain. There were
heaps of other people there that night; I think the pousada sleeps about 40
people, luckily because we wouldn’t have been too far off. In our crew we had 8
people; there were 2 different Brazilian couples, a Brazilian solo backpacker
and 4 more Brazilians climbing because it was someone’s birthday. There were
about 15 Koreans and then there was the Portuguese….. From memory there were
about 8 or 9 of them, but it sounded like there were twice that many. When we
had dinner we had a glass or two of wine to warm us up before getting to bed as
early as we could, about 9:30, because we had to get up at 2:45, to leave by
3am. It seemed that the Portuguese group had the same idea, a few glasses of
wine with dinner to warm up (it is freezing in Hatubulico, sorry I forgot to
mention that, the pousada is 1900m above sea level), but we were wrong. Their bright
idea was to stay up all night getting maggot that way they wouldn’t have to get
out of bed at 2:45…..
Their idea sucked the big ones. I think they attempted to
keep their voices down until around 1am, then after that it was a free for all.
There was yelling, singing, great big hearty belly laughs, they were walking
the halls with their phones blaring out music and generally just making a
ruckus. I went out there a few times and
told them to ‘ssssshhh’ or just shined my torch at them and glared, both of
which bought us about 15 seconds of silence then they went back to what they
were doing. Considering everyone there that night was there for the same
reason, and everyone had to get up before 3am, it was probably the rudest most
inconsiderate group act I have ever witnessed in my life. I was so angry.
So getting up at 2:45am wasn’t a problem as the entire place
had been awake since at least 1am. Standing outside waiting for our guides was
interesting, with about 25 people glaring at the Portuguese and them all
standing around, roaring drunk, looking right back at us trying to figure out
why we were staring at them, ignorant bastards. The guides all rocked up and at
about 3:15am we started the climb!
It started off on a nice steady incline, all of us were
pretty happy with it and were quickly getting our spirits back when the guide
veered off the road and took a goat track that climbed very steeply. That was
short lived, he was just taking a short cut up to the next road, but that road
and every road after was a fair bit steeper than the first, so from that point
on conversation was almost non existent, it was rough. Then after about an hour
of busting our guts walking steep roads, we got to an archway (only pic I have
of it is in daylight) which sort of signified the beginning of the mountain
climb. First it was a very steep and winding staircase, but after about half an
hour of that, the remaining hour and a half was just a steep gravel goat track,
tough to climb in pitch black. We stopped when we needed to and the 35 odd
adventurers that left the pousada had quickly broken up into smaller groups of
3-5 depending on their fitness and mountain climbing prowess. It was a tough,
but enjoyable climb, the stars were like nothing else I have ever seen, the
nearest source of light pollution would be Dili, 100km away and even that is a
small town by Australia’s standards, not too many street lights or anything to
light up the night’s sky. The last 20-30 minutes were bloody difficult, it got
steeper, windier, colder and harder to breath, due to the altitude, but we
finally made it to the top.
One of the 'goat tracks' in daylight, looked even worse in the middle of the night
The archway
The view as we hit the peak!
Another 10 mins, almost dawn now!
Me, freezing my ass off!
My group made it up just as light was coming over the
horizon, but about 25 minutes before the actual sunrise. That was almost the
coldest I think I have ever been, 95% of the climb we were sheltered from the
wind by the mountain, but on top there was no such shelter, if fact you almost couldn’t
get warm. From the climb we were all very sweaty and after 3 hours of solid
exercise as soon as you sit down your muscles get cold anyway. Luckily I had
been carrying a backpack, which started off weighing about 15kg but by the end
must have weighed in at around 50kg, actually Damien carried it the last 30 or
so minutes for me, I was in struggletown. The backpack had 4 or 5 dooners/throw
rugs in it and a sleeping bag, so we dragged all that out, huddled together and
waited for the sun to rise. My hands have never hurt so much, I couldn’t
straighten my fingers they were so cold. Dani was the same, I was actually
wondering if I might lose a finger due to frostbite if I stayed up there much
longer after sunrise.
Sunrise!!! finally....
The view on the top was just breathtaking, as was walking
the 10 or so steps up to the Virgin Mary, where the wind would actually take
your breath away and you would have to turn away from the wind just to get a
breath. I could see Dili, Atauro Island 20km past Dili, I could see a few of
the other Indonesian islands, Betano and the south coast, Ainaro, Mt Kabalaki
(which hid our view of Same) and I could see the peak of the mountain coming
above the clouds in Bacau which is where the sun rose from. The walk was hell,
the temperature was as if hell had frozen over but it was all worth it, the
view and the sunrise was just something that I will never forgot. We were lucky
and got an amazing day, great weather, clear star filled night and a clear blue
sky in the morning.
A pic of our guides all rugged up on the peak waiting for us to finish with photos so we could go back down
By the time the sun came up less than half of our total
group had made it up. There were maybe 5 of our group, the 4 Brazilian guys who
were rowdy as and when the sun came up they popped a bottle of champers, broke
out a birthday cake and sung happy birthday to one of their mates, I got it on
video but sadly all you can hear is the wind. One of the Brazilian couples made
it up there before sunrise as well, but the other couple hadn’t, nor had any of
the Japanese (who actually went and got cars at one point and tried to drive
them as far up the mountain as they could, before getting them stuck on the
side of cliff) and best of all nor had ANY of the Portuguese. The other Brazilian
pair got up there eventually, as did most of the Japanese, but it turns out
that the Portuguese didn’t make it more than about 30minutes into the journey
before they realised it was beyond them and they turned around and went back,
not quite justice, but I will take it. We decided to wait for the last 2 of our
group just down the mountain a little, where the wind wasn’t so fierce. We
hadn’t gone more than a minute or two down from the peak when we ran in to our
two stragglers. They might have been slightly behind us, but on a climb that
tough it’s not how fast you make it up there, it’s just getting there that is
the accomplishment, only about half of our group ended up making it, one of the
Japanese girls was crying by the time she got up there, crying and hugging
everyone!
Birthdays, Brazilian style!
Passing our stragglers, I'm not sure if it was exhaustion or exhilaration on their faces at being 50m off the summit
About 20 minutes down from the peak, out of the wind is a
wooden hut type thing. I’m not sure when the last time it was used, or by whom,
but it was deserted today so we camped in it for an hour or so and had a nice
makeshift breaky. In one of the backpacks was coffee percolator and a small gas
stove, coffee, tea, biscuits and all sorts of yummy things to help warm us up. Once we had gone through all our supplies we
began the decent. Surprisingly it wasn’t any quicker, we did stop for a few
extra breaks on the way down, the view never ceased to amaze so pictures needed
to be taken.
Pics from the decent.......
After we got back we had a short little afternoon siesta and
headed back to Maubissie. We had one last dinner and some drinks with the gang
that night before they headed off in the morning, but Naomi and I weren’t
heading back until Tuesday morning, so we had another night in Maubisse, so we
decided to stay at the famous Pousada. It was great, probably the best guest
room we have stayed at in Timor. Food was great, room was big, bed was comfy
and the views sensational. We met a couple of married British doctors over here
on a summer internship kind of thing, had dinner and breaky with them, they
were really nice. Then we were picked up and taken back to Same by Naomi’s work
colleagues.
Mt Ramelau Team Photo
More pics of the pousada at Moubisse
That night we actually had dinner organised. I’m not sure if
I mentioned earlier, but through our friends Tasneem and Scott in Dili, while
we were in DIli we managed to get to have a swim in pool at the US embassy,
which was unreal! But while we were there we met the US Ambassador for
Timor-Leste, a really nice lady who we got to talking to for a few minutes.
Anyway a few weeks later word got through to us that she liked us and was
planning a trip out to Same soon and that she would like to have dinner with us
when she did. Well that was Tuesday night and when I say dinner with the US
Ambassador, I do not mean a massive dinner in which there are 50 people there
and we were just in the same room as her at the time. I mean she invited the
two of us for a nice little intimate dinner, was pretty special!
Ooooo I almost forgot. One of the coolest things about the sunrise at the peak was the shadow of Mt Ramelau!!! When the sun rose the mountain cast a shadow, obviously right? I had never really thought about it, but it looked unreal, almost like its own mountain. Here are a few pics.
Aside from all of that, not all that much has been
happening! J
Last night we moved into our new house! The view is stunning and the house
itself is pretty cool, so nice to finally not be living in one room out of a
suitcase. Will get some pics up in the next blog of the house and our new mode
of transportation, which fingers crossed, should also get here this weekend!
Talk to you all soon!
Love Ben and Naomi
PS: Before you go, here are a few more pics from the climb, mostly from Nemo's camera and her view of the sunrise, almost from the summit :-)
