Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I've either been planning for, going on, or recuperating from this trip to Ramalau that happened last weekend (Ramalau is the tallest mountain in Timor, people regularly hike to the top). The whole thing was a giant debacle and a festival of errors. Luckily for you, I had my camera ready.
The whole thing started off fine enough, Connor and I were up and ready to go at 8 Saturday morning. It's about a six hour drive so it made sense that we'd get up early and make it to the Posada (hotel) at the base of the mountain early. The plan was to leave the house at 9 in the morning and have all day to drive there, or at least that's how the plan was described to me. What actually happened was that Connor and I were ready by 8:30 and the others weren't ready until 9:30. Then we didn't leave the house until 10:30. Then we stopped to pick up someone who was going with us, that neither Connor or I had any idea about (Her name is Jaquelin and she's quite a lovely person but that aside...). These are all minor irritations, I get it, but six hours in a tiny mitsubishi "4x4" with only a couple seat belts... You can see why I may have been a bit grumpy. We finally get out of Dili around 11 and then it's just bumpy roads and crazy drivers, all seemingly out to kill me.
The trip really didn't have a good side for me until we stopped here for lunch.
It was a tiny little restaurant up on this hill in a place called Mobessie. It was the last "big" town we would hit before we turned on a dirt road and headed up into the mountains. It was a nice little place, had some tasty rice, veggies and chips. The owners of the place did try to stiff us a bit when they said we had ordered three meals instead of two. We only ordered two but used three plates to share it among ourselves. They didn't like that. Sharanya and Connor talked them down until it was just two dollars over what we should have paid. It sucked, but that's just the way it is sometimes.
After eating, we walked around the garden.
And then we spent some time just happy to be out of the car, gazing out into the magnificent hills.
(Connor is the one standing atop the crumbling wall. My little mountain goat...)
Breathtaking as these views were, we soon had to pile back into the car. The hills and cliffs were still gorgeous, but I find that they can loose a little bit of their majesty when you're worried that your little car is going to pitch over the side of one.
Yeah, four more hours of roads that look like that. That is, if they're even there at all and haven't been washed away by heavy rains. It was incredibly nerve wracking.
Especially when we actually did go partially over the edge of a cliff a little while later. I would have taken pictures but I was too worried about not being in the car if it went over, and then once I was out I was worrying about the car crushing the home that was at the base of said cliff. So was the woman who owned the house, because a few minutes after we got the car stuck, halfway over a cliff, she came up to remind us that we could have crushed her house, and then oh so helpfully tell us that we would never be able to push it back onto the road.
Sharannya called the Posada and told them what had happened and they said they would send someone, but not when. So in case things didn't work out, we flagged down a truck that was going to the base of the mountain anyway, and Jaquelin and myself hitched a ride. It was a long crazy process, but eventually they got the car unstuck by having about sixty young men, lift it from various angles and deposit it back onto the road. Meanwhile, Jaquelin and I were safely snuggled in at the Posada, waiting for them to arrive
When they finally did, it was about 8pm, and as the others wanted to catch the sunrise from on top of Ramalau, we were getting up at 3am to start the hike. We didn't end up getting to bed until about 11, and I was pretty pissed.
Four hours of iffy sleep later, the alarm goes off and we wake up, put on our many layers, and meet the guide outside. It was absolutely freezing. But that was soon forgotten as we started our trek and the heat our bodies were making became so unbearable that we shed our layers and continued climbing in silence.
About a mile up, I was sick. I was sick into some bushes, I was sick into a ditch, and I'm pretty sure I was sick into someone's front yard. Come to find out, that we hadn't even gotten to the mountain yet. We were just on the road up to it. I'm not ashamed to say I couldn't do it. Connor walked me back down to the Posada, being super great, contributing my illness to a combination of poor sleep and altitude sickness. I don't know what it was, but I'm sure glad I didn't go all the way up.
After
jogging to catch up with the rest of the group (Yeah, my guy's a champ), they caught the sunrise from the peak and had a good long rest while I lay in bed and nibble on bread far below them. When they finally made it back to the Posada at noon, I was up and feeling a bit better. Connor told me that he was glad I wasn't there with him, because it would have been miserable for me. What we had been told was a mild, three hour hike there and maybe two back, was actually more like a five hour hike up, and four hours back. Yeah, forget that.
After everyone rested their legs for a while, we piled back into the car and headed back down the mountain. back in Mobessie we stopped for gas. I can tell you now, that getting gas from a dark container sold by some guy on the street, was not a good idea. As soon as we were out of town the car started acting funny. Jolting and barely creeping up hills, and making this awful coughing sound. The return trip that should have taken six hours, took eight. I was pretty grumpy by the time it was all over.
It was pretty alright, but does that make up for a trip where I spent a total of 14 hours on the middle hump in the back of a tiny car with no seat belt? Does it make up for a trip where I spent at least 60% of all the time in the car thinking that we were going to skid right off a cliff? Does it make up for altitude sickness and going to a mountain just to sleep at it's base and then going home?
Oh yeah it did.
