West Timor photos

Trip to Timor-Leste & West Timor by Will

Our expectations of East Timor were that it would still be fairly unsafe. I didn’t even want to go there after hearing stories of other travellers. But after spending a couple of hours in Dili chatting to the locals, our opinion of the place changed. We met Ahkito and Oloh on the beach. They spoke broken English, so it was a hard to communicate with them, but they were good fun. [Dad adds: the UN has a large presence in Dili with white UN marked cars everywhere. Few soldiers though - we saw three or four Americans at the Port]
The day after arriving in Dili, the Thor Pacific arrived with our car. Me n dad went down to the port to sort it out. We went to Customs and tried to tell them that our car was on the Thor Pacific, so they gave us some forms to fill out. The forms asked for the port registration, the ship registration, the colour scheme of the ship, how many crew were working on the ship and numerous other questions that we had no clue of the answers…we eventually worked out that they thought we were bringing in a ship from Darwin!!! [Dad adds: mind you, one look at Captain Dave and First Officer Will with dreadlocks and in thongs should have raised their suspicions!!] We had a laugh and we gave them our paper work for the car and everything was fine. [Dad adds: We were stopped from entering the Port forklift movement area by this guy shouting “hey you…“ - an Aussie was working on the Port forklifts and crane trucks and wanted to see our car Delivery Order, and then told us to come back in an hour or two. It was exciting to see the car being lifted out of the hold by crane, and driven out of security. We walked up to the car, the driver assumed we were the owners and simply handed us the keys! That was it. We had the car back.]
The roads in East Timor were shocking. Every 100 meters or so we had to slow down to a crawl because of huge pot holes. The first day we drove in another country, we broke our own rule of not driving at night. We had to ask locals for directions numerous times with success most of the time. We stopped when we saw some kids at night, to ask them for directions, but they ran off in all directions. [Dad adds: we had to ask for directions as the towns are not signed and there are almost no road signs]
We got through the border to Indonesia with no fuss. We had to tell the Indonesian Customs people what to do with our Carnet (visa for car).
Once in Indonesia the roads improved heaps. We drove to Kefamenanou and stayed in a Hotel there, then drove to Kupang the next day. We have been in Kupang for 2 days and are loving it. We have met a couple of Aussie surfers at the local bar that are here for a well known surf break on the island of Rote. We also met a 25 year old bloke from QLD tonight, who has ridden an old motor bike he bought off eBay from London to West Timor. I am going to go to the local water fall with him and a couple of French dudes tomorrow.
We have found out the ferry leaves from Kupang to Flores on Thursday, so we only have one more day here. [Dad adds: we are eating with the locals. There are very few “normal” petrol stations, but numerous locals sell fuel by the side of the road. This comprises a few plastic bottles of fuel and a funnel. Many village houses have a straw roofed open portico in front of the home, which looks cool and airy]

That was Australia...

At least for a while...

Day one started with tears and ended with strange bedfellows. We ended day one in Adelaide in a YHA - mixed 6 bed dorm! The last stay in a youth yostel was decades ago.

The rest of the trip to Darwin was better for us both - leaving home, R and H was the teary part. We sometimes stayed in a campground and at other times camped off the side of the road. Camp fires were cheery as was our shortwave.

Kakadu and Lichfield were new to us and impressive. We trialled the sat nav at Jabiru but turned it off after a while when the young lady told us to drive 250km along the Arnhem Highway...

I am having trouble getting the pictures where I want them. No doubt Will will do better. Off to Dili tomorrow...