Ony and the driver, Anish, picked us up at the beach near Kosmos at 08:00. Normally he does three day trips into the mountains, but we were uncomfortable being away from Kosmos for more than one night, so we opted for the shortened two day version.
We followed the coast for a few kilometers, seeing many of the same sights as we had seen on our bemo ride yesterday. We turned and headed up the mountain. As we moved farther out of town, the buildings became less dense and there were small pockets of farmland here and there. Ony commented that we were lucky we had come at the beginning of rainy season, when it was green. The trees and bigger bushes were green, but the ground cover and smaller shrubs were dead, and it seemed brown and dusty to us. The flowers have all started to bloom, so there were lots of colorful flowers to see. Also, there were an amazing amount of butterflies flitting about. Despite being dry, it was still a pretty drive.
The east bound road went back down the mountain into a valley. Our first stop was to see a couple of musicians, Jitron K. Pah and his son. They are actually pretty famous within Indonesia, even playing for the president. They play the sasandu instrument professionally. The sasandu itself is a cylinder with strings all the way around it. The number of strings varies from 25 to 43, depending on the size of the piece. There is a woven basket around the backside. In addition to playing, they also hand craft the instruments and sell them out of their home. We were surprised by how beautiful the sansadu sounds. Almost like a cross between traditional Japanese string music, a harp and a guitar. The dad played Indonesian folk songs for us and the son played western pop tunes. We wanted to buy CD’s, but they were out. Here is a shot of son playing and dad singing.
Near the musicians’ home, we noticed a lot of traditional grass huts set very close together on a large piece of land. Seeing the little huts in suburbia was a surprise in and of itself. All around us there was quite a bit of space between most structures, but these little huts were right on top of one another. It turned out to be a refugee came for displaced East Timorians. We actually passed another one a few more miles away.
Our next stop was Taman Wasada Campling park, which is 46 kilometers east of Kupang. The entrance of the park has a swimming hole, a cave, a couple of caged crocodiles and a snake. The entrance area is actually pretty sad looking. A few hundred yards from the entrance there is a small gate that leads to the nature preserve and hiking trails. Normally, Ony will lead his groups down the walking trails to point out species of birds and flora and fauna, but being as we were on the turbo trip, we just took a quick look at the crocs and moved on. We also drove past a world war two monument a few more kilometers down the road that commemorated the Australians efforts at trying to fight off the Japanese in Timor. From the glimpse we got from the moving vehicle, we are sure it was nice, but hey, we had to cut things out.
The park was located at the foothills of Gunung (Mountain) Fatuleu, which is 1115 meters high. After we left the park, we climbed the steep, curvy road up the mountain. The view from the top was just gorgeous.
Except for the stretch of land encompassing the park, there are small structures dotting the landscape along the road, with pockets of farm land and forest in between. After leaving the park, we noticed that more and more of these buildings are grass huts, many of them round. We saw a lot of small modern houses with grass huts behind them.
We eventually made it to the city of SoE, where we stopped for lunch. In Indonesia most families cook a bunch of food in the morning and leave it sitting on the table all day long, eating it throughout the day. The food is not reheated, just eaten at room temperature. Many restaurants do the same. They prepare all their food in the morning and put it in the front window. You pick the restaurant where the food in the window looks most appetizing. You point to the various dishes you want and they scoop some out along with some rice. Back at home we rarely ate at buffets because we both have an aversion to food that has been sitting out for hours. Needless to say, Ony chose a restaurant with the food in the window. We both took a deep breath and remembered our vow to be adventurous and try new things.
When we walked into the restaurant we needed another deep breath. There were a few flies around that kept landing on the food, being shooed off by the staff. Ony told us what each of the various dishes were. As tempting as the animal livers and hearts sounded, we opted for vegetarian, figuring the chances of getting sick from meat and fish was higher than veggies. From left to right: 1. Potato patties, which are deep fried mashed potatoes. We are unsure of what the topping is. 2. Fried egg, which was greasy 3. Mystery veggie that was roasted with a spicy sauce on top. Out once you got past the seasoned part the veggie in and of itself is pretty bland. You ate the skin and all. 4. Jackfruit in a spicy peanut sauce that dominated over any flavor the jackfruit may have. It had the texture and consistency of artichoke hearts 5. Cassava, which looks and tastes like cooked spinach. The food was not bad. And it was cheap. The total for all four of us was about 6 USD.
To be continued”¦