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June 1, 2005
The best laid plans of mice and men....
We're getting pretty close to leaving - hopefully sometime over this coming weekend. We're currently waiting for one more visa to come through for our new temporary team member Ina, a native East Timorese who will paddle in the double with Chris as far as the western edge of Alor at Kalabahi. Ina will be an incredibly valuable asset, speaking both Teton and Bahasa Indonesian, and having a wicked sense of humour to boot!
We're also hoping to get the Indonesian consulate here to notify the Indonesian army and navy of our coming. The navy up around Alor are especially to be avoided apparently due to the Indonesian building a new naval station on Wetar, an island just 20 miles north of Dili.
Tomorrow morning we get out in the kayaks for the first time to practise our rescue drills in the event of a capsize at sea. We're all really looking forward to getting these beautiful kayaks in the water and seeing how they perform. I suspect as beautifully as they look on land.
It's proving pretty tricky reducing all the gear we need down to an amount that will actually fit in the relatively small storage spaces available. But it's good practise also, having to decide what is absolutely necessary and what can be left behind or sent ahead with Moksha. One that note we scored a result today with Perkins Shipping kindly agreeing to send Moksha to Singapore for free, saving around $1000. It all helps!
The plan right now is to paddle out out Dili and head 20 miles west down the coast to the town of Maubara, where we can stay the night with Ina's friends at the nunnery. There we'll leave some of the heavier gear and hire a truck to take us and the kayaks to the border, around 40 kms away. After carrying the boats across the border and getting stamped into Indonesia, we hire another truck (or hopefully Ina's friends there in W. Timor can help out) to take the kayaks to the coast town of Atapupu where we relaunch them and paddle back up the coast to Maubara, thereby completing that section by human power. Although strictly back in East Timor, Ina has spoken to her friends in East Timorese immigration to allow us this one-off bending of the rules (we'll be stamped OUT of East Timor at this point), before we paddle the 16 nautical miles across the Alor.
The best laid plans of mice and men....
Posted on June 1, 2005 12:50 PM