A warning to lovers of hamburgers, chips and chicken with eleven secret herbs and spices – Dili will not deliver for you. Oddly enough though, for a city with no addresses, there are home delivery options. Instead of giving a street name and a house number, you offer a landmark: “It’s up the road passed the Cathedral, the house with the peace sign painted on the fence.” Okay, I admittedly haven’t tested delivery to my new house yet. It’s probably just easier to pick up. However, I digress.
The main reason that Dili is a no-go zone for junk-food-loving couch potatoes is that it’s overflowing with fitness fanatics. I would go so far as to assert that, Friday and Saturday night’s at Castaway and Dili Beach Hotel aside, fitness is the number one past-time of malae’s in Timor. Let me give you a hint of what’s on offer.
There are Pilates classes almost every day and some days you can choose between three different time slots; over the week the location is varied too, so both ends of town are catered for. On Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays there is yoga in the upstairs studio. A different woman runs day-time yoga classes.
On Mondays and Wednesday evenings there is touch football at freedom field. Males and females are welcome just rock on up and you’ll be allocated to a team. If you’re female and keen for an extended run, you’ll probably get one because there are ratios to adhere to and usually a dearth of women.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays there is boot camp. This is not as bad as it sounds. It’s been run by various people over the years – ex-pats tend to come and go. On Tuesdays there are sprints and sit-ups and push-ups, as well as punching and kicking. On Thursdays boot campers run up the 588 stairs at Christo Rei.
There is also a gym, though the opening hours may not suit, a Saturday walking group, a Saturday afternoon running group and of course the ad hoc activities organised by groups of friends – or soon to be friends united in their fitness pursuits. For example, some friends walk the stairs at Christo Rei, on an almost religious basis (pun intended). They start at 5:30am, walk up and down three times then head home for a shower and then work. Others swim, though probably not at the moment; it’s wet season and a band of brown extends around the shore. Others ride the Hera Loop, a distance, I’m told, of 25km of undulating landscape that hugs the coast before moving slightly inland. In reality it’s a loop only in the sense that you start and end in Dili – though not at the same spots.
In May there is the First Lady Cup, a 10km, 5km run / walk. In June there is the Dili Marathon and then the pinnacle of human endurance in Timor – the Tour de Timor, a six-day bike race that some madly keen cyclists are already in training for.
All in all, it’s not the place for sugar addicts . . . though I have to admit there are a couple of cake fridges around the place capable of providing rich rewards for calories burnt.
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