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June 10, 2005

No More Christmas in Dili

First off a huge thanks to my friend Dale Priem from Port Douglas in Queensland, Australia who has been working consistently over the past couple of months to 'up' the profile of the X360 site on the web, in particular with search engines. He's done a lot of legwork to make the site more public - huge thanks to that man!

Quite a lot has come together in the past 48hrs, but we're still in Dili. We decided to wait on for the letter from the Indonesian Embassy, and should have this in our sticky paws Monday morning. The meeting we had this morning was quite an eye-opener though I have to tell you.

Ina, Armando Lay (Ina's cousin, a drinking buddy of the guy we were meeting) and I trooped over to the Indonesian Embassy at around 1030 this morning armed with a disguised bottle of Claymore to meet with Pak Hendisin, the Chief of Immigration. This was the guy we met with last week who told us to basically go away and jump through a gazillion hoops before coming back and asking for a letter. Well Ina's plan this morning was to use her brother in law's company to 'sponsor' the kayaks over the border using their export/import license with Indonesia (rather than registering the boats with the Ministry of Transport - a lengthy + expensive process). But this didn't fly. From the way the conversation was going in the beginning (all in Bahasa - so I'm picking up on body language here) I reckoned we'd be trooping right back out of there with nothing to show for ourselves again.

But unbenownst to either Armando or I Ina had a plan B up her sleeve. She'd already contacted the East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao before the meeting and lined up a request letter from him to the Indonesian Ambassador and Pak Hendisin. With the promise of this letter and the Claymore quietly pushed under the table during the course of the meeting the atmosphere visibly lightened, and to the best of our knowledge a letter will be produced on Indonesian Embassy letterhead with Pak Hendisin's stamp and signature first thing Monday morning. Bingo.

So, it doesn't get more high level than this! The plan is now to leave first thing Tuesday morning. We'll kayak down the coast 22nms to Maubara. Then, because of the delay in getting away from Dili, one of Ina's friends will come pick us and the kayaks up by truck (this woman is turning out to be our saviour as you're probably gathering!) and take us to the border to clear immigration and enter the kayaks into Indonesia. Chris actually hired a motorcycle the day before yesterday and scoped out the border area with his mincers. Apparently the border is right by the beach (so not far to carry the kayaks to the water once we cross over) but the distance between the Timorese side and the Indonesian side is about half a kilometre, a fair distance to carry three boats and all our gear. Then the other side there are 6 x different groups of officials we have to go through (immigration, customs, quarantine etc). Quite the right of passage to paddle kayaks through Indonesia. I think we'll need a bottle of Claymore ourselves once (or rather if) we get through all that lot.

From there we paddle to Alor. I can't divulge the real route we're taking until we arrive on Alor - might shoot ourselves in the foot if the wrong person reads this. But it does look like we won't be spending Christmas in Dili anymore.

Posted on June 10, 2005 12:36 PM

Comments

whew! thank you, ina! but of course, everyone you hook up with seems supercool, jason. ;)

Posted by: gl. at June 11, 2005 3:06 PM