80 miles on a dirt road to Baucau







The scenery was beautiful. There were beaches and mountains. The sky was partly cloudy and the weather was a little bit more temperate.
I have never been on this long of a dirt road in my life. It is a major highway between the two main cities on the island. The government is in a major project to improve the road. Almost the entire distance has been torn up and currently is only a dirt road. The road was rutted and bouncy. The truck we were in was old and probably had the original shocks. It's squeaked and bounced and rattled. We went 80 miles in 5 hours which is about 15 miles an hour.

Unfortunately the road won't be completed until we're done with our mission. I hope I never have to go to Baucau again. We were a total of 10 hours with three of us packed inside of the back seat. The truck did not have air conditioning. It had roll-up windows but all but one of the window handles were missing so we had to pass it around when it was needed.


During the rainy season the hills are all green. During the dry season they will all turn brown.

On the way home we stopped at a vegetable stand. I was just glad to get out of the truck for a few minutes. Half of the vegetables for sale we had never seen before. Cheryl and I bought some of the Corn. We fixed it that night. It was perhaps the worst tasting corn we've ever had. It looked like regular corn.


The natives that were traveling with us were glad to find some dried meat for sale. It looked like beef jerky. It was not in the package but was bound with string and the meat was hung from a tree. They generously offered us a piece. It was from some kind of animal that they did not know the English equivalent word for. Cheryl  had a piece and as of now 24 hours later she is not sick.
The major form of transportation between the cities are private buses. They have personality. Even though there's probably no maintenance on them they all have great paint jobs. Every bus had people riding on the top. Which is amazing considering the dirt road and how much the bus would Sway and bump. If you want to transport your motorcycle no problem. You just lift it up and strap it to the back of the bus

Comments

  1. The PiersJanuary 21, 2018 at 7:18 AM

    What great adventures you are having...we hope you are keeping a journal as well as this blog. It will bring back memories for years to come.

    ReplyDelete

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