Hello my dear Steemians and welcome to this final episode of “People of East Timor”!!!

So far,

• we started our trip in East Timor's capital Dili,
• checked out the beautiful Atauro Island,
• took a bus to a little town called Baucau,
• watched a cruel cockfight,
• went on a crazy ride with a pig (!!!) to Lospalos,
• hung out with the kids of Lospalos,
• and finally stayed a night in an old colonial building in Tutuala.

Today, we finally reach the goal of our trip: Jaco Island, a lonely island off the east coast of East Timor.

When we woke up that day in our tiny chamber in the hotel in Tutuala, we hadn’t slept much. But that didn't matter at all, the three of us were extremely excited to finally go to Jaco Island. Jana and Thomas went to have breakfast, whereas I wanted to go to the bathroom first. After I had done what people do in the bathroom, I wanted to join them. I tried to open the door but the handle was broken and I couldn’t get out. I was trapped in the bathroom…

I didn’t have a phone with me, but even if I had had one, it wouldn’t have had service. The room in which my friends were having breakfast was too far to hear me yelling, so there was no other chance than waiting till they were done eating and would come looking for me.

After about 45 minutes, I heard Thomas approaching. He was kinda angry and asked me what the hell I was doing, we wanted to leave to Jaco soon. I explained the situation and we consulted with each other through the door. I told him to get the woman from the village who worked in the hotel. He said something like “ah fuck it” and kicked the door in. I was so surprised, it was really funny.

This is what the result looked like

So after Thomas, my personal hero, had freed me from the chains of the bathroom, I had some breakfast as fast as I could and we packed our things. We would leave most of our stuff in the hotel and just take light baggage to Jaco. After all, it would be a trek of a few hours downhill to reach the coast.

Perfectly prepared and excited as f**, we went down the hill pretty fast.

On the way, we passed graveyards…

hung out with some cool youngsters…

and met some locals heading the same direction (fortunately they weren’t planning on going to “our” lonely island).

Once we arrived at the bottom of the hill, we needed to figure out how to actually go to the island.

We talked to some very nice fishermen and I took portraits of them:

In the end, we paid a guy with a little boat to take us to Jaco Island. He would bring us there and pick us up about 6h later. We would pay him afterwards, just to be sure he would come back ;-).

The boat ride was only a few minutes and the little gem we reached was incredibly beautiful. No signs of humans as far as you could see. Turquoise water, white sand and a forest just a few meters from the beach. It was a dream come true! Our only island, I was reminded of movies like Cast Away and it felt unbelievable.

We went swimming and snorkeling, walked for an hour along the beach and just enjoyed being at this incredible place. We were so happy and proud to have made it there. When Jana and Thomas were lying at the beach, I kept walking around and taking the above pictures. I just can’t help it sometimes…

A few hours later, we saw the fisherman coming back. It was about time since sunset would be two hours later and we also had run out of fresh water. Happy and grateful, we went back to the mainland (well, actually the main island) and had some food in a little restaurant/shack at the beach. In there, we met the first other western people in days: 2 Portuguese who were living in East Timor working for an NGO.

Fortunately, they had a car – also the first one we had seen in days – and took us with them back to Tutuala. It was a crazy ride, the car was made for concrete roads (I forgot the model), and the way back up was a dirt road with huge rocks here and there. But we were glad to get back without climbing a hill after sunset... Thanks for that, guys!

Back in our hotel, we were so exhausted, we basically went straight to bed. The next day we started our journey back to Dili as fast as we could. We made it in two days, in time for our flight back to Denpasar, riding in the back of trucks and some busses again…

This wraps it up for today. The end of my “People of East Timor” series. I hope I could take you with me on my trip and show you a place in the world few people ever heard of!

Thanks for all your comments, upvotes and follows! I hope you enjoyed the ride!

Till then,
keep wandering and wondering,

Love,

mr.wonderlust