Good heavens, it seems like i never mentioned that we visited Atauro last weekend. Allow me to rectify.There is an island north of Dili and it is called Atauro. To this island, a party of about fourteen convened for the birthday of Mirjam and Alex. I hadn’t been to Atauro before, and it was one of the places that i really wanted to visit before i’m shipped home. People tell that it’s a beutiful island, and it was.

There were quite some arrangements over email before the departure, and i appeared by what i thought must have been the departure site of the boat, except that it wasn’t really where the mails said it should be, and i was the only malae in sight. Turns out i was the first one to arrive, a status i’m not too used to. Within half an hour all others had appeared (except, i have it, for one poor sould who missed the boat?) and we could leave. The boat, or ship, was an old transport vessel from some years back and it was divided into a few categories. A lot of people spent most of their journey on the car deck. Then there was the economy class, with hard plastic seats, the first class, with a tv showing a pirated Harry Potter movie, and the Bisnis Klas, which was a small cabin with little ventilation, in front of the boat.

The best view, however could be obtained either from the very front of the car deck, or from the top deck, just behind the staff quarters and a half-closed door saying something in Indonesian which surely must not have meant “no entry”. It was there we spotted the dolphins.

Arrival in Atauro maybe three hours later, and we are transported on the back of a very boucy pick-up truck to Eco Lodge, the only hotel known to me on this beautiful island. Eco Lodge is a truly nifty place. They have a handful of bungalows, some on stilts, so you sleep three or four meters up in the air, and some closer to the ground. The house i got for the weekend was on stilts, so some time was spent on the verrandah under the house. Oh the bliss!

Eco lodge isn’t named Eco lodge for nothing. One particularily impressive thing was the lightning system of the bungalows. On the roof, there are solar panels, which are wired to a battery, which is wired to lamps. The lamps are made of a bamboo stick, attached to half a coconut. Within, there’s the cork of a mustard bottle, filled with LED lights. Excellent combination of technology and local looks. This is something i hope to appear in other places too that don’t have a wire handy. I must note that there is power on the island, though it is generated by generators. The main consumer of this electricity is the cell phone tower which supports all eight cell phones on the island. This, including the tourists’ phones. OK, maybe a bit more than eight, but not a huge number in any case.

In the evening, there was a celebration for the two birthday princesses, which started with a cocktail of two drinks that had names too complex to remember after two of them, dinner and cake. The ladies (what equality?) got theese fluffy boppers (didn’t know they were called that!) which proved immensly popular and greatly underlined their personalities. I love the pic to the right where the birdies seem greatly interested in Mad’s photos :).

And then, entertainment. The nibbling contest that started in Baucau the weekend before, got an even bloodier re-match. Everybody loudly claimed that they had won, and world peace was threatened. There was an even more artistic contest of artistiaclly blowing these tootling thingies that i don’t know what they’re called.

And some night swimming (…deserves a quiet night…), where Eoghan managed to knee a sea urchin, which was disinfected with some Pure Malt Ballantine’s (12y). The urchin must have died happily.Next day was a mellow one. There was some swimming, some walking and a lot of relaxing. Among my highlights was a discussion about social culture, linguistics, euro-politics, equality and toilets. And i got to try out a contact lens for the very first time. It was amazing! Like borrowing back your eyesight. I wasn’t able to get the other lens in, so i spent the day having one clear camera and one fuzzy one (Wayne’s world reference). Nor was i able to get the lens out in the evening, so it was like that until Monday.

Towards the afternoon, half of the birthday crew left the island. The sea was rough and the boat was small and according to one traveller on the vessel, she had not been this scared in all her life. And she’s not of the easily scared kind. The even smaller canoe-type boat that took the travellers to the slightly larger refugee-type boat was filled with water more than once. For some reasons the pictures don’t look all that dramatic, but i tell you it was rather wet. And to make things worse, it soon turned dark. And it was only then i realized that i had been sitting on the GPS, that would have been much more useful on that boat.We the land crew were pretty worried about the away team, and there was quite some cheering and raising of glasses when we got SMS-missive that they were safe if not perfectly sound on the Dili shores. The Atauro team could finally concentrate on more cultural issues, like playing Toss the pigs.

Next morning was an early one. The alarm went off at five and breakfast in the dark was at five-thirty. Then with Timorese precision, the six-o’clock-departure was at six-thirty-ish, in the form of a bumpy ride back to the jetty we hadoriginaly come to.

The sun was coming up. And it was beautiful. If all sunrises look like this, i could well get up at five-thirty once or twice in my life to watch this. The colours were amazing and i got some rather nice looking pictures. Again, the boat didn’t arrive immediately, and we did stand some time on the jetty wondering whether they hadn’t seen us, they hadn’t woken up, or whether they just couldn’t be bothered just yet.

Well, in the end, something happened and another canoe-boat appeared and started ushering us to a much more reliable-looking craft than the one the first team had left with. Yes, it was a wavy ride. Yes, it was a very wet ride, and we all received the sea-spa treatment. But we made it without fear, even saw a group of dolphins on the way back. And it was great. The whole weekend was. Thanks all.