Ramelau

The last few weeks have been pretty wild. Recovering from Malaria, catching up at work, exercise, and then an insane trip to the districts over the election weekend all contributed to making this the most eventful time I’ve had in Timor thus far.

You have already read about my Malaria, so that’s no longer interesting. Work and exercising aren’t particularly exciting either, so I’ll just sum them up as follows: Good. Now let’s get down to the trip to the districts.

Originally this trip had been planned for a few weeks ago, but it’s the kind of trip that you really need a car for, and borrowing a friend’s fell through. Suddenly on Friday morning it looked like we would be able to get a car, so if we wanted to go we needed to decide pretty much exactly then.  A unanimous yes sends Sharanya to go retrieve the car and the rest of us make vague plans about what exactly we may need. Unfortunately, as I’ve already mentioned, this is election weekend, so pretty much all the stores are closed. We decide that we can collect bottles of water and snack while on the road the next morning. Friday evening rolls around, Alexis and I head to bed early to be sure we are up for the 9:00am departure while Sharanya and Carrick decide to stay up and pack. Alexis and I are up at 8:00am sharp, packed and ready to go by 8:30. We decide to watch an episode of something from our amble selection of pirated TV shows as there is yet no sign of movement from Sharanya or Carrick. 9:00 rolls around and nothing. I rouse them with a knock on the door and inform them of the time. They don’t seem worried or apologetic in the least. Turns out what was a rigid 9:00am departure when Alexis and I went to bed turned into a 9:00ish in the time it took the two of them to finish packing and watch a half a dozen episodes of Modern Family. Just to be clear time +ish with Carrick is a BIG window. We don’t end up getting out of the house until around 10:30, which is not really a good start as far as I’m concerned, but everyone else seemed to be in high spirits. The hopes I had of a relaxing, fun drive were quickly demolished somewhere between realizing that neither Alexis nor I had seatbelts, the addition of third person to the tiny car’s back seat -- and my shoulder space, and the roads which were beyond bumped and cliffy, for lack of a better word.

Despite the occasional terror induced either through driving right on the edge of a plummet to nothing, a near head on collision with a car coming around a narrow blind corner in our lane, or more commonly both with the latter leading to the former, it was actually a lot of fun getting to see a really different side of Timor than I’ve seen. Dili is fine, but just that. Fine. The districts are incredible and really worthy of more exploration. We took the occasional break along the way to either just get out and stretch or see the scenery. We stopped in a small town along the way for lunch and were treated with a stunning meteorological display from the 360°-view hilltop as clouds came whipping over an adjacent line of hills, down into a valley, and then back up and over our heads as a light fog. The wind that was carrying them was surprisingly fast as we could actually watch their progress almost the whole way (it was pretty faint in the valley, but you could look up and see the fog streaming by overhead).  With full bellies (my first meat other than the tuna from breakfast that morning in a month as June was a “vegetarian trail run”) we got back on the road and continued on. As we got nearer and nearer our destination the road got less and less a road and more like a dry river bed. It wasn’t actually, but the size of the ruts and complete lack of anything constructed in many parts indicates that it was just land that got driven on a lot. We were on a road that was completely dirt and rocks, but really not the worst we had seen or would see when what I had been worrying about the entire time, at least in some small part somewhere in my brain, happened.

Sharanya was driving, Carrick was in the passenger seat (which hear is on the left side of the car like in Europe) and I was behind Carrick, with Alexis in the middle (neither of us belted because of the family who owns the car’s dog is a nervous passenger and finds comfort in indirectly trying to kill us) and Jacqueline belted and in the far right seat (dog liked her I guess). We slowed down as the road narrowed with a more or less fifteen foot drop onto someone’s house (location location location) on the left, and a rather nasty looking puddle on the right. That sounds like an easy choice, but some of the puddles concealed car eating pits of doom. Well, probably not doom, but severe discomfort definitely. Carrick stuck his head out the window to keep an eye on the left side of the car as we tried to navigate around the puddle. Unfortunately, the left side of the road was also wet, and the left two tires slide and dropped right off the edge. We were now completely stuck; high-centered on the muddy edge of a narrow “road” about fifteen feet above someone’s corrugated-tin home. Carrick, thinking quickly, said “everyone get out of the car -- that side” clearly indicating the side of the car where exiting would be met with ground rather than the unbridled force of gravity. We climbed out of the car quickly but carefully before we could assess the situation. The car was in no imminent danger of falling onto the house, but it was also very clearly not going anywhere, although that did not stop us from trying to push it free. Sharanya called ahead to the hotel we were headed to and asked them to send a truck with some rope to get us out. Just to be sure that our need was to clear we had one of the many locals who had started to gather around what was certainly the most entertaining happening for miles in any direction explain the situation in more precise Tetun than Sharanya could manage. A few people came by on horseback or motorcycle, and stopped to talk to the people who continued to come from absolutely nowhere to watch the Malai stand befuddled at what to do next.  About a half an hour or forty-five minutes after getting stuck a truck passed by us the same direction we were going. They stopped to see if they could help, and it turned out it was a hired driver and a tourist from Hong Kong headed to the same place as we were. Just to make sure someone would hear our plea, we sent Jacqueline and Alexis on ahead with them to the hotel to make sure that someone was coming to get us. Sharanya, Carrick, and I just stood and waited, talking to the locals who continued to gather at the social event of the year when we could make ourselves understood. Eventually the truck from the hotel showed up with a rope, but the angle of the stuck car and the road, trying to pull the car forward presented the risk of tipping it over the edge which would send it plummeting down onto the house below. We tried to figure out an angle that might work, but did nothing but dent and scratch the front fender in a poor attempt to get around the stuck vehicle for a better position from which to pull. We were still standing scratching our heads as the sun was setting behind us when our answer came around the corner from the direction we were trying to go. It was a dump truck full of people.

Here in Timor, dump trucks are more often seen carrying people than stuff, especially during political rallies. This particular truck was filled with people who had just finished voting and were heading back to their respective towns. The ridiculously skilled truck driver got around the stuck little Mitsubishi Pajero jr. and stopped. Sharanya negotiated with the driver of the truck who convinced everyone to chip in and get the car free for something like a dollar a piece (which turned into $50, but what the hell else could we do?). The sun now well set, one person got in the driver seat, and another forty or so got behind the car to push on the rope attached to the front to pull. Carrick and I in were in the latter group. “Satu, dua, TIGA” and we all pulled/pushed like crazy while the man in the car got the wheels spinning. The car came free and there was much cheering and scattering as we celebrated our success while desperately trying to get out of the way of the car now moving towards us rather quickly. We paid the leader of the group, liberally distributed thanks, high-fives, and handshakes, and then jumped in the car. The last leg of the trip was about another hour, but after what had been a ridiculously emotionally exhausting experience it seemed like the longest single stretch of the drive. We got to the “Posada”, which is a hotel, ate the dinner which was provided along with our rooms for $15, and then hit the sack as we had a very, very early start.

The guide was to meet us at 3:00am on Sunday morning, so we all got up around 2:00am to be sure we had everything that we needed and were dressed very warmly. It was already cold in our rooms, and where we were going it was only going to get colder. The power was out for the entire hotel, so we had to get dressed and packed in the dark. At one point I used a little flashlight that came on my cheapo Timor phone to get down to the bathrooms and have a morning pee, only to be scared half to death upon exiting when the surprisingly cat-like Jacqueline, who had come down to use the adjacent bathroom, looked up at me wearing her glasses with built in flashlights. Not only was I alone in the dark before she stealthily moved into position, but the glasses with the lights sent my mind reeling, desperately scanning for something that fit that meme. “Alien!” definitely (and embarrassingly) passed through my still half sleeping brain before “Person + glasses+lights” fell into recognition.

3:00am rolled around, the guide showed up, and we started walking. After about twenty minutes of gentle uphill strolling, the real hills started to show themselves. Out of nowhere, we were suddenly walking up loose dirt and stone roads at an angle that could teach stairs a thing or two. After about ten minutes of this, Alexis couldn’t take anymore. I love my girlfriend, dearly, but she is not in good shape. These hills had been described as “beginner”, “more like a walk than a hike”, “easy”, which is unfortunate, because they were none of these things. Between the lack of food, early morning, and serious exertion, Alexis had to stop. She then threw up and we decided that she needed to go back to the hotel. I told the group to go on ahead and that I would catch up and led my poor dizzy/sick girl back down the hill to the hotel. By the time I got her settled back in bed with a bit of water in her stomach to make up for what she lost, it was 4:10am. I now had only two and half hours to catch up with the group or make it, without a guide by only the light of the moon, to the top of the tallest mountain in Timor.

The reason for this time limit was two-fold. One I couldn’t stand the idea of getting part way up, and then meeting the group on their way back down and being forced to join them, therefore not being able to summit. The other time constriction was the fact that this was a sunrise hike, which is why we got up so damn early in the first place. I was now more than an hour behind the group and had to redo part of the trip. I emptied anything from my bag that I thought was unnecessary, including some of the waters the others had packed and were adding too much weight. I took off at a slow jog for the first portion of the walk that had been legitimately just easy, but then slowed down about a hundred feet from the first of the serious hills because we had been accosted by a couple of dogs that must of lived on the nearby farms, and figured running by would only further provoke them. Although I was probably right, that didn’t really stop them. The couple of dogs had turned into a pack of three or four who got together and came at me. They were probably just trying to scare me away, and were not planning to attack, but I didn’t want to take that risk. I grabbed a large rock from the road and threw it to intentionally miss and yelled “SEI” which means “go away” and people are constantly saying to dogs here. The dogs made a few more moves forward and I lobbed a few more warning walks, but eventually they lost interest as I got further and further from their houses. Now really on my own, I could get down to business. I hiked up these monster hills for about thirty minutes, stopped for five to stretch and grab a drink of water, and then got back to it. There were a few times when I didn’t know which way to go, and just took a look at the summit and guessed. One time I climbed a particularly treacherous hill that I thought was the path, but it turned into out to just be a dry river bed and dead ended into a mass of shrubbery. I lost a lot of energy and a bit of time to that mistake, but eventually got back down to the main trail, somehow without breaking my ankle on the loose dirt/stones on a steep decline in the dark. I could only really see the trail in front of me and the trees or lack thereof around me. I could tell when the drop off the path was just a steep hill, and when I was actually walking on a cliff, but that was about it. I could not see very far for most of the journey except when the moonlight caught a distant hill in just the right way. In addition to the moon to give me light, I also had Venus to give me inspiration. I’m not saying that in any weird astrological way, I just love Venus and have never been able to see it so well, so would look up every once in a while and it would cheer me up enough to keep moral up. Probably about 2/3 of the way up the mountain, the path became harder and harder to follow, despite the light of the moon and now the first traces of twilight. The path was no longer a clear strip of sometimes packed sometimes loose dirt and stones, but more like a small line of patted down grass. In addition to that the nearer I got to the top the more opened it became, and the right direction became less and less intuitive. There were a lot of moments when my body was start to give out and beg for rest, but from years of cross-country and wrestling, I’ve learned that the mind will always quit before the body. I adopted a new motto while I was moving to help encourage myself to keep going, and even found myself saying it out loud a number of times. My motto was “Slow Not Stopped”, or SNS as I would say to myself. The idea being that instead of stopping to rest, I would just slow way down, but keep moving. I would usually just take very small steps, but try to keep my feet moving at about the pace I wanted them to be going. At one point, lost in my own head, I thought I heard someone say “Connor?” I looked up, but could only see bushes. I probed the still air on the mountain, “Carrick?” Sure enough, Carrick was just about fifteen seconds further up the hill resting on a log. I gave him some water from my bag and offered him a bread roll (of which I had brought two) but he could only take a few bites before his upset stomach wouldn’t allow more. I knew exactly how he felt. We walked together for about five minutes as he explained where he had separated from the group and about how far ahead he would guess they were, but then he encouraged me to go at my own pace so I could potentially make the sunrise. I continued on, really just slogging up the hills, occasionally taking a few beats of stand upright, take in my surroundings and pick the most path-like bit of ground I could find. After another twenty minutes or so of this grueling pace, the ground began to level out and the sky started to open up. It was now light enough that there were only two or three stars visible in the sky, but it was all pre-dawn light. When the ground flattened out, I could walk to quickly that I felt like I was sprinting, but then it would turn into another hill and I suddenly I would be dragging seventy pound shoes. The closer I got to the summit, the more tired my body became, and the more it just wanted to collapse. As soon as I saw the top with Sharanya, Jacqueline, Paul (the Hong Kong tourist from earlier), and the guide all at the top, I nearly did. One brief but brutal set of stairs etched into the side of the mountain and I was at the top. Just before dawn.

We stood and rested on the peak for sometime as we watched the sunrise. We bundled against the cold of the wind with whatever clothes we had brought along with the extras I had in my bag. About forty-five minutes after we parted ways, Carrick arrived. We took a ton of pictures, which will hopefully be put online soon as none of the cameras were mine, and then headed back down. Jacqueline, Paul, and the Guide all went on ahead while Carrick, Sharanya, and I took a snail’s pace back down the mountain. Many of the views which had been lost in the dark of the night were now in their full glory. Walking down felt like a different trip entirely at points. We continued to stop often for breaks in the shade, made especially necessary by our being completely out of water and Carrick and my extreme whiteness. We didn’t make it back to the hotel until something like 11:30 or noon. We took a few hours to recover at the hotel, and then got back on the road headed to Dili.

We were now aware of the terrible road conditions and the limitations of the little car, so the trip back was fairly slow going. We stopped to get gas in the town where we had stopped to have breakfast on the way out. Unfortunately there wasn’t a gas station, per se, just a guy with a tank of gas and a funnel. Immediately after getting enough to make it back to Dili, the car started behaving very strangely. It was losing RPMs in waves and Sharanya was doing all she could to just keep it going. It would struggle anytime that we hit an uphill, and flat was problematic but not as bad, and downhill was completely fine as we mostly just coasted. At first I thought that we had just gotten a tank of either terrible gas or maybe even diesel and the car’s time was limited, but after a while we began to think that it may have just been coincidental that the problem started right after getting gas and maybe it was a problem with the transmission. It seemed to have trouble every time it downshifted, or tried to, but if we got a steady speed on flat or any speed downhill it seemed to be fine. The trip back took hours -- miserable “the car is going to die any second” hours. Sharanya did an awesome job of keeping the car going and getting us back to Dili, but there was nothing she could have done to make that not suck.

We dragged ourselves up the stairs to our house and all pretty much instantly hit the sack. Poor Sharanya and Carrick had work in the morning, but luckily for mes, my boss had given us a five day weekend (Thursday, Friday, and Monday off) so I got a day to recover from the lunacy of the day before.

Next week I head to Bali to renew my Visa here in Timor, so I may write a blog from there about there, or you might have to wait for another substantial amount of time before I get another one up. Hopefully this ridiculously long post will be enough to keep you all satisfied until then.

Love you all,

Cheers!