Hello dear Steemians and welcome to the second episode of my “People of East Timor” series! Today I want to take you to Atauro Island, a tiny peninsula north of Dili.
In case you missed the first part, check it out here for a little introduction to this amazing country and its history:
https://steemit.com/travel/@mrwanderlust/people-of-east-timor-dili-1
When we woke up in our hostel in Dili on Saturday morning, our second day in East Timor, all three of us were very excited to explore the country outside the capital. Without even having breakfast, we took our backpacks, went to the main road and took a taxi to the harbor.
The concept of going by taxi in East Timor is rather different from what it is in other places, a taxi is not so much a mean of private transportation. In other words: If someone, or in our case some people on the way want to go the same direction as you do, it is totally self-evident that you share the cap. To me, that felt like the perfect way to get to know some locals, even though my Bahasa Indonesia (the Indonesian language) was still pretty basic at that time. Communication will always find its way; a smile is enough most of the time and so we (particularly Jana) had a lot of fun playing with a little girl...
It was a bit more difficult than expected to find tickets for the ferry to Atauro Island but after walking around the harbor and asking various people for half an hour, we finally made it.
People in East Timor speak various languages including Tetum Dili, Indonesian and Portuguese. It really depends on who you talk to and how old the person is. Trying to communicate in English was basically hopeless, though. The currency in Timor-Leste is US-Dollar and the price level is way higher than in Indonesia. As exciting traveling the country was, it was also quite expensive.
Our plan was to check out Atauro Island, stay there for a night and go back to Dili the next day so we could start the journey to Jaco Island in the east. The 3h ferry ride to Atauro was calm and comfortable, nothing to report.
We had apples on the way. It was OK to eat them and they were definitely good quality. Why I know that? Because they said so:
When we arrived on the island, we found out that the ferry would go back to Dili about 4h later and would return only in a week. We had just assumed that it would go daily which was very naïve in retrospective. We took it with humor of course, and tried to see as much of the island as possible in the 4h we had since there was no way we would stay an entire week.
We had a lot of fun laughing about ourselves and experiences like that will never change my way of traveling nearly irresponsibly unprepared. To me, the more I prepare a journey, the more boring and unexciting it gets...
Every Saturday, when the ferry comes, there is a market in the tiny village around the peer. People sell jewelry made from corals and all kinds of food.
Kids were playing everywhere and I could feel that the ferry’s arrival had brought excitement to the local people’s life. It felt like a street festival back home. A few boys caught my attention because they played with a monkey that apparently was their pet.
Since we were starving already, we couldn't wait to try the local food. The fresh squid looked amazing.
As much as I want to tell you how awesome it was, I gotta be honest: It was disgusting and that was hilarious.
We then decided to go for a swim at the beach and got to know two kids of a NGO employee from Nepal who was working in Dili. They told us a lot about life in Nepal while we were just relaxing in the water, but that is a whole different story.
After that, we went back to Dili and spent one more night in our hostel, tired but ready for more adventures in the upcoming days.
This wraps it up for today, I hope you enjoyed the journey to Atauro Island. Stay tuned and follow me for the next episode about a beautiful stretch of coastline and Dili's statue of Cristo Rei!
Till then, keep wandering and wondering,
Love,
mr.wonderlust