The
furthest east you can go in Timor is Jaco Island. It is a place where a
lot of aid workers go to get away from Dili for the weekend.
The island itself is uninhabited but the local guys will ferry you across the channel and back for 5 dollars.
There are some traditional houses that you pass on the road from
Lautem.
Strings of shells hanging on the roofs of these
houses with big nautalis shells in the middle that look like
giant necklaces.
The
guy at the beach was trying to sell a beautiful one for 3 dollars. I
did buy a fish from him for 2 dollars but that nautalis shell would
never have made it out in one piece on that bike.
The road between Tutuala and Jaco is in rough shape and steep. It was a
bit of work getting out of there on the old mail bike but it made it in
the end.
There was a lot of rain so I waited it out, standing under the eve of a
building in Tutuala.
After an hour or two it stopped and I headed down
to the beach. It is only 9 kilometers but it took a couple of hours.
Not having done any research on the place I was surprised to find that there were no guesthouses or anything down there.
Some under cuts in the rock walls were used by the local guys to sleep
out of the rain. They were kind of like shallow caves and you could
stay dry on some bamboo benches they made.
They didn't mind me hanging
around for the night so I took off down the beach with the old bike to
find firewood.
There was some scrap line in the debris that lands up on the beach with
the tide. I used it to tie a bunch of branches to the back of the bike
and drag to the campsite. It was really nice to dry out by the fire.
A
guy and his wife working with a Taiwan or Singapore NGO was down there
too. They landed up snorkeling on off Jaco the next day but I headed
out.
I wasn't 100 percent sure that bike was going to make it out of there.
It was best to get an early start in case something went wrong I would have all day to figure something out.
But no worries. That little bike chugged it's way out of there.
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