By the dawn’s early light

At 2963m about 1000m in vertical ascent, Mt Ramelau, in Ainaro District is the highest mountain in Timor-Leste.  It is approximately 70km and 7 hours drive from Dili.  Yep, you read correctly – that makes our speed about 10km / hour.  Admittedly we did stop for coffee and a bit of lunch, so make that 15km/hour.

The roads are winding and pot-holed, in places the pot-holes are interspersed with asphalt.  The countryside is breathtakingly beautiful.  As you climb through Dare and out of Dili, you begin to appreciate the spread of the city and just how low it is compared to the hills that surround it.  It seems to stretch on forever as Christ gets smaller and smaller and finally disappears as you descend into the valleys behind the country’s capital.

Our first stop was Aileu – it has coffee, some great jam and clove drops and a crocodile.  The forlorn old croc is housed in a pen behind the police station and the poor thing did have the demeanour of a long-term captive.  The locals liven him up with live chickens for which we were fortunately absent. 

Further on Maubisse sits nestled between hills and overlooked by the Government-owned, Portuguese Pousada or guesthouse.  We stopped to admire the views and the garden and were treated to some acrobatics by the local children.  Timorese of all ages love having their photos taken and you really can’t openly carry a camera without obliging their hopeful faces – if you do, you’re rewarded with beaming smiles that are universally photogenic.

Our destination was Hato Builico and we arrived there at about 3pm.  We stayed at a guesthouse with seventeen rooms, though for that night, we six were the only occupants.  No one else, it seems is nuts enough to venture into the mountains in wet season.  They do have a point.  It had rained on and off most of the way and in some places the road was more like a mud-wrestling pit. 

Hato Builico is extremely peaceful.  There’s no loud motorcycles, no blasting doof-doof music, no musical horns with their tunes that with only one honk seem to blare on and on and on.   And even better – and more surprising – it’s cold.  Not just fresh, definite jeans and jumper cold.  It was absolutely blissful!  The most interesting aspect of the highest town in Timor-Leste is that it is kitted out with very modern solar panel street lights.  Now that is progress.

 

You can climb Mt Ramelau at any time.  We chose to do a sunrise climb, meaning that we would get up at 3am and hopefully reach the summit by sunrise, which is by all accounts, spectacular.  You can climb it alone, though most people recommend hiring a local guide.  At about $3 per person this is infinitely doable and also gives back to the local economy.  We went to the house of a local guide and secured his services through a young woman who could have been his daughter, granddaughter or some other extended family. 

“He should come, even if it’s raining,” we told her.  She nodded what we took to be her understanding and assurance that he would indeed be there – rain, hail or shine.

 After dinner and a game of take two which became remarkably more energetic after the distribution of some ginger lollies with a real ginger kick, we hit the beds, snuggling into the thick blankets.  Only hours later we were up again donning long pants, jumpers, even beanies.  Beanies!!!  In Timor-Leste! 

Fortunately it wasn’t raining.  Unfortunately our guide was missing in action.  Being the intrepid explorers that we are – perhaps foolhardy; perhaps content to follow the two people who’d been up the mountain before (albeit that one of them clearly admitted that she’d gotten lost doing so unguided), we set out.    You can drive to the bottom of the path.  The road is steep and quite daunting in the darkness.  But we made it to the gate.  There are no photos to show for this part of our adventure – it really was pitch black.  Each of us was armed with a torch.  I used the one in my phone; it worked a treat. 

The first part of the journey upwards is a loooooooong set of beautifully crafted steps.  They seem to go on forever and as elegant as they are – particularly in the wee hours – it would be a damn shame to have them go all the way to the summit, which is apparently the plan.  After the steps comes the real mountaineering . . .  and path finding.  The path itself is a well-worn track.  The challenge is that there are a couple of tracks – short cuts and long cuts and finding the right one can be tricky when you don’t have Rudolf to guide you.  Still, our leaders did a superb job and we reached the summit by 6am!  Yeehaw bring on the dawn!!!

Well, of course the dawn arrived.  It’s one of nature’s basic rules – the earth turns, there is night and then there is day.  What isn’t necessarily a given is that the dawn won’t be shrouded in mist.  So as we gazed in wonder at the statue of Mary and the Timor Telecom tower, both of which grace the peak, it slowly dawned that the spectacular dawn we’d have high hopes of seeing would have to wait for another trip.  

With frozen hands and chilled noses, we began our descent.  The mist lent an eeriness to the path, which in the early morning light was blindingly obvious.  It also laid in the valleys like marshmallow between green jellied moulds.  But about a third of the way down there is a traditional Timorese house.  It is said to be sacred and Timorese will take a handful of soil with them before crossing through the house grounds.  This is said to ward off evil spirits.  Climbers can use the house overnight, though there is nothing in it, bar spaces to sleep and a pit toilet and shower space.  That means you’d need to lug everything up the mountain with you – a seriously daunting prospect.  Let me add that while people do stay there, the local’s congeniality has been sorely tested by some Aussies who lit a fire and consequently burnt a large portion of the area. 

As we walked through the house something miraculous happened – the mist cleared.  One of our number, more adventurous than the rest of us or perhaps more cognizant that this might be the only time he’d pass that way, wanted to climb back up.   Three of us declined and three of us gathered our cameras, left our packs behind and began another ascent. 

I can tell you my muscles were none too happy to be forced upwards again.  But our effort was rewarded.  Though I couldn’t quite make out the coastlines, it is said that from Mt Ramelau you can see the ocean on both sides of Timor-Leste.

And just to prove how strange the world can be, as soon as we started back down, the mist rolled back in.  Though it impeded the views, it made everything magical.  I could imagine we were stepping through the set of Lord of the Rings.  At the bottom, the grandeur of the paths beginning, lost to us at 3am, became apparent.  It is a very grand entrance . . . the archway to an unforgettable experience – whatever the weather.