Subject: A scruffy island paradise

Subject: A scruffy island paradise

A scruffy island paradise

FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 2005

A storm of fine, white sand blew across the half-deserted beach as a group of teenagers kicked a soccer ball by the surf; nearby, other youngsters whooped as they raced bicycles along a beachfront road.

It was the end of a lazy afternoon one recent Sunday on the outskirts of Dili, the listless little town that is the capital of East Timor, a poor, almost completely undeveloped nation in the Indian Ocean.

This nation shares roughly half of a narrow island with West Timor, which is part of Indonesia. The two-story town becomes an oven in the midday sun, with mostly jobless men and women strolling slowly past near-empty shops.

Though the weather was perfect and the water crystal clear, this prime beachfront lined with palm trees had an off-season feel to it. Only the low-key Caz Bar and one or two other sunset-watching hangouts seemed alive, with clusters of beer drinkers and a mixture of Western rock and pop music drifting through the air.

Simon Richardson, 23, a volunteer medical worker from Britain, turned his back to the stinging storm of sand as a handful of foreigners mixed with the local beachgoers. He pronounced his verdict on a place that has the potential to be an alluring tourist destination but almost none of the infrastructure to support it.

"There's not a lot to do in the traditional sense," he said. "There's not much night life. It doesn't have all those things like Jet Skiing." Like the other foreigners on the beach, which lies under a towering hilltop statue of Jesus, Richardson was not a tourist. He was one of the small army of aid workers, volunteers and United Nations employees who help keep East Timor - officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste - functioning three years after it emerged from a quarter century of occupation by Indonesia to become an independent nation.

"The main reason to come is it's a new place to come," he said. "I feel like it's becoming safe here and tourism is about to take off in the next 10 years. We can say we were here at the beginning." The government tourism bureau says the nation gets about 500 tourists a month - mostly from China - but virtually all of them have in fact come primarily to work, said Miguel Lobato, director of tourism for East Timor.

Some hop over briefly from Indonesia to renew 30-day tourist visas.

"They say, 'What should we do?"' said Susie Mattson, 23, an American who works for an international aid organization and was sitting near Richardson on the beach. "Well, there's stuff to do, but it's really expensive. I always have difficulty recommending things."

The expense mostly involves high-priced airline tickets and poor-quality hotel rooms whose rates are a strain for a low-budget traveler. The top hotel in Dili is the Timor, a functional but charmless hotel, which may rate a couple of stars but charges $90 a night and serves extraordinarily bad food.

The Turismo, slightly less expensive, is a seaside hotel on the eastern side of town that has been there forever with its green patio and fresh ocean breezes. In the same class, the Esplanada, a newer hotel a little to the west, offers pleasant rooms and good food.

It is indeed possible to spend very little for a room in a cheap backpacker hotel, and get what you pay for. There are a dozen or so good restaurants that pitch themselves to foreign aid workers. Places like the Tropical Bakery, the City Café and the One More Bar serve good Western food and are gathering points for the tight-knit foreign community. Dinner for two in rather spartan settings might cost $20 or $25.

All of this is part of the makeshift economy that depends on the spending of the foreign workers. As the United Nations and aid agencies shrink their staffs since East Timor became an independent nation three years ago, the entire national economy has begun to contract and these restaurants will have to struggle to survive.

Tourism is one of the few hopes for a boost to East Timor's economy. But nothing is specifically in place to welcome tourists, and even the secretary of state for tourism, Jose Teixeira, concedes that it will be years before East Timor will be ready to handle large numbers of visitors.

"We need to have a lot of infrastructure," he said in an interview, "including the legal infrastructure for investment. As you know, we started from scratch here."

Always a poor nation, this former Portuguese colony was utterly ruined in 1999, when the Indonesian troops who had occupied it for 24 years were forced to withdraw after a UN-sponsored referendum resulted in a vote for independence. As they left, the soldiers and the Timorese militias they sponsored systematically tore the country apart, burning most of its buildings and wrecking the infrastructure.

East Timor has been peaceful since then, first under a UN administration and then as a self-governing nation. Most of its buildings have been repaired or replaced, although there are occasional power failures. But it remains desperately poor.

Even the little open markets scattered around town are soporific, with vendors spreading meager piles of roots and vegetables on the ground or on small wooden stands. Battered taxis cruise the rutted streets and carry passengers for a bargained price of a few dollars.

And so for the moment, Teixera said, the country can expect to welcome only "a bit of the intrepid sort of travelers."

For people like this, East Timor offers something increasingly rare, the kind of serendipitous adventure that backpackers experienced in the 1960s, when there were still numerous "exotic" destinations where roads were rough, accommodations iffy and food not always readily available. As Tony Wheeler, the founder of the Lonely Planet guidebooks, noted in his newly published guide to East Timor, "Restaurants may be nonexistent in the back blocks, so it's wise to carry food with you, as you can get very hungry before the next market day."

Adventurers find beauty in thickly forested mountains and small, Portuguese-era port towns like Liquiçá and Baucau, with their whitewashed buildings sloping down toward the sea. Perhaps the most enthusiastic adventurers are the scuba divers who have found some of the world's most glorious unexploited dive sites off the coast of East Timor.

"The thing that's special here is that for the most part, you are the only ones at the dive site," said Greg Kintz, an American aid worker who is an avid diver. "The reefs are for the most part undamaged, so when you go down it's absolutely myriads of fish, unbelievable diversity, gorgeous colors."

There are dozens of dive sites along the beaches, where coral reefs are accessible without a boat. There are 25 sites within 30 miles, or 48 kilometers, of Dili alone, said another American diver and aid worker, Nick Hobgood. One is right off the pier at the downtown port, he said, and another at the Com Beach Resort about six hours' drive east of Dili over poor roads. But even enthusiasts warn of one of East Timor's major drawbacks. "It's not easy to get here and you have to go through one of the world-renowned dive sites to get here," said Kintz, noting that geography has dealt East Timor one insurmountable drawback: the primary route to reach it passes through Bali, 700 miles west, a place many visitors never want to leave.

Getting There Dili can be reached from Denpasar in Bali or from Darwin, Australia. The Denpasar flights are on Merpati Nusantara Airlines, an Indonesian airline, and can be booked through a travel agent or at (62-21) 654-6789 in Jakarta, and cost about $485 round trip. The flights from Darwin, about 440 miles, are on Airnorth, www.airnorth.com.au, starting at about $395 round trip, at $1.34 Australian to the U.S. dollar. The schedules are complicated and should be checked.

On arrival you are asked to pay $30 (the United States dollar is the official currency) for a tourist visa before going through immigration.

There's a $10 departure tax at the airport. Taxis at the airport charge $5 to $7 for the 15-minute ride to the center of town. They cruise the streets for negotiated fares. I paid $2 an hour, although some drivers asked up to $5 an hour.

Where to Stay The Esplanada, Avenida da Portugal (known as Beach Road), (670) 331-3088, fax (670)- 3313-087, www9.hotelesplanada.com, waterfront of Dili is one of the most pleasant hotels in East Timor. The atmosphere is relaxed and comfortable, with 34 rooms in two-story bungalows rooms surrounding a pool. The cost is $99 a night, dropping slightly for longer stays.

A storm of fine, white sand blew across the half-deserted beach as a group of teenagers kicked a soccer ball by the surf; nearby, other youngsters whooped as they raced bicycles along a beachfront road.

It was the end of a lazy afternoon one recent Sunday on the outskirts of Dili, the listless little town that is the capital of East Timor, a poor, almost completely undeveloped nation in the Indian Ocean.

This nation shares roughly half of a narrow island with West Timor, which is part of Indonesia. The two-story town becomes an oven in the midday sun, with mostly jobless men and women strolling slowly past near-empty shops.

Though the weather was perfect and the water crystal clear, this prime beachfront lined with palm trees had an off-season feel to it. Only the low-key Caz Bar and one or two other sunset-watching hangouts seemed alive, with clusters of beer drinkers and a mixture of Western rock and pop music drifting through the air.

Simon Richardson, 23, a volunteer medical worker from Britain, turned his back to the stinging storm of sand as a handful of foreigners mixed with the local beachgoers. He pronounced his verdict on a place that has the potential to be an alluring tourist destination but almost none of the infrastructure to support it.

"There's not a lot to do in the traditional sense," he said. "There's not much night life. It doesn't have all those things like Jet Skiing." Like the other foreigners on the beach, which lies under a towering hilltop statue of Jesus, Richardson was not a tourist. He was one of the small army of aid workers, volunteers and United Nations employees who help keep East Timor - officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste - functioning three years after it emerged from a quarter century of occupation by Indonesia to become an independent nation.

"The main reason to come is it's a new place to come," he said. "I feel like it's becoming safe here and tourism is about to take off in the next 10 years. We can say we were here at the beginning." The government tourism bureau says the nation gets about 500 tourists a month - mostly from China - but virtually all of them have in fact come primarily to work, said Miguel Lobato, director of tourism for East Timor.

Some hop over briefly from Indonesia to renew 30-day tourist visas.

"They say, 'What should we do?"' said Susie Mattson, 23, an American who works for an international aid organization and was sitting near Richardson on the beach. "Well, there's stuff to do, but it's really expensive. I always have difficulty recommending things."

The expense mostly involves high-priced airline tickets and poor-quality hotel rooms whose rates are a strain for a low-budget traveler. The top hotel in Dili is the Timor, a functional but charmless hotel, which may rate a couple of stars but charges $90 a night and serves extraordinarily bad food.

The Turismo, slightly less expensive, is a seaside hotel on the eastern side of town that has been there forever with its green patio and fresh ocean breezes. In the same class, the Esplanada, a newer hotel a little to the west, offers pleasant rooms and good food.

It is indeed possible to spend very little for a room in a cheap backpacker hotel, and get what you pay for. There are a dozen or so good restaurants that pitch themselves to foreign aid workers. Places like the Tropical Bakery, the City Café and the One More Bar serve good Western food and are gathering points for the tight-knit foreign community. Dinner for two in rather spartan settings might cost $20 or $25.

All of this is part of the makeshift economy that depends on the spending of the foreign workers. As the United Nations and aid agencies shrink their staffs since East Timor became an independent nation three years ago, the entire national economy has begun to contract and these restaurants will have to struggle to survive.

Tourism is one of the few hopes for a boost to East Timor's economy. But nothing is specifically in place to welcome tourists, and even the secretary of state for tourism, Jose Teixeira, concedes that it will be years before East Timor will be ready to handle large numbers of visitors.

"We need to have a lot of infrastructure," he said in an interview, "including the legal infrastructure for investment. As you know, we started from scratch here."

Always a poor nation, this former Portuguese colony was utterly ruined in 1999, when the Indonesian troops who had occupied it for 24 years were forced to withdraw after a UN-sponsored referendum resulted in a vote for independence. As they left, the soldiers and the Timorese militias they sponsored systematically tore the country apart, burning most of its buildings and wrecking the infrastructure.

East Timor has been peaceful since then, first under a UN administration and then as a self-governing nation. Most of its buildings have been repaired or replaced, although there are occasional power failures. But it remains desperately poor.

Even the little open markets scattered around town are soporific, with vendors spreading meager piles of roots and vegetables on the ground or on small wooden stands. Battered taxis cruise the rutted streets and carry passengers for a bargained price of a few dollars.

And so for the moment, Teixera said, the country can expect to welcome only "a bit of the intrepid sort of travelers."

For people like this, East Timor offers something increasingly rare, the kind of serendipitous adventure that backpackers experienced in the 1960s, when there were still numerous "exotic" destinations where roads were rough, accommodations iffy and food not always readily available. As Tony Wheeler, the founder of the Lonely Planet guidebooks, noted in his newly published guide to East Timor, "Restaurants may be nonexistent in the back blocks, so it's wise to carry food with you, as you can get very hungry before the next market day."

Adventurers find beauty in thickly forested mountains and small, Portuguese-era port towns like Liquiçá and Baucau, with their whitewashed buildings sloping down toward the sea. Perhaps the most enthusiastic adventurers are the scuba divers who have found some of the world's most glorious unexploited dive sites off the coast of East Timor.

"The thing that's special here is that for the most part, you are the only ones at the dive site," said Greg Kintz, an American aid worker who is an avid diver. "The reefs are for the most part undamaged, so when you go down it's absolutely myriads of fish, unbelievable diversity, gorgeous colors."

There are dozens of dive sites along the beaches, where coral reefs are accessible without a boat. There are 25 sites within 30 miles, or 48 kilometers, of Dili alone, said another American diver and aid worker, Nick Hobgood. One is right off the pier at the downtown port, he said, and another at the Com Beach Resort about six hours' drive east of Dili over poor roads. But even enthusiasts warn of one of East Timor's major drawbacks. "It's not easy to get here and you have to go through one of the world-renowned dive sites to get here," said Kintz, noting that geography has dealt East Timor one insurmountable drawback: the primary route to reach it passes through Bali, 700 miles west, a place many visitors never want to leave.

Getting ThereDili can be reached from Denpasar in Bali or from Darwin, Australia. The Denpasar flights are on Merpati Nusantara Airlines, an Indonesian airline, and can be booked through a travel agent or at (62-21) 654-6789 in Jakarta, and cost about $485 round trip. The flights from Darwin, about 440 miles, are on Airnorth, www.airnorth.com.au, starting at about $395 round trip, at $1.34 Australian to the U.S. dollar. The schedules are complicated and should be checked.

On arrival you are asked to pay $30 (the United States dollar is the official currency) for a tourist visa before going through immigration.

There's a $10 departure tax at the airport. Taxis at the airport charge $5 to $7 for the 15-minute ride to the center of town. They cruise the streets for negotiated fares. I paid $2 an hour, although some drivers asked up to $5 an hour.

Where to Stay The Esplanada, Avenida da Portugal (known as Beach Road), (670) 331-3088, fax (670)- 3313-087, www9.hotelesplanada.com, waterfront of Dili is one of the most pleasant hotels in East Timor. The atmosphere is relaxed and comfortable, with 34 rooms in two-story bungalows rooms surrounding a pool. The cost is $99 a night, dropping slightly for longer stays.

A storm of fine, white sand blew across the half-deserted beach as a group of teenagers kicked a soccer ball by the surf; nearby, other youngsters whooped as they raced bicycles along a beachfront road.

It was the end of a lazy afternoon one recent Sunday on the outskirts of Dili, the listless little town that is the capital of East Timor, a poor, almost completely undeveloped nation in the Indian Ocean.

This nation shares roughly half of a narrow island with West Timor, which is part of Indonesia. The two-story town becomes an oven in the midday sun, with mostly jobless men and women strolling slowly past near-empty shops.

Though the weather was perfect and the water crystal clear, this prime beachfront lined with palm trees had an off-season feel to it. Only the low-key Caz Bar and one or two other sunset-watching hangouts seemed alive, with clusters of beer drinkers and a mixture of Western rock and pop music drifting through the air.

Simon Richardson, 23, a volunteer medical worker from Britain, turned his back to the stinging storm of sand as a handful of foreigners mixed with the local beachgoers. He pronounced his verdict on a place that has the potential to be an alluring tourist destination but almost none of the infrastructure to support it.

"There's not a lot to do in the traditional sense," he said. "There's not much night life. It doesn't have all those things like Jet Skiing." Like the other foreigners on the beach, which lies under a towering hilltop statue of Jesus, Richardson was not a tourist. He was one of the small army of aid workers, volunteers and United Nations employees who help keep East Timor - officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste - functioning three years after it emerged from a quarter century of occupation by Indonesia to become an independent nation.

"The main reason to come is it's a new place to come," he said. "I feel like it's becoming safe here and tourism is about to take off in the next 10 years. We can say we were here at the beginning." The government tourism bureau says the nation gets about 500 tourists a month - mostly from China - but virtually all of them have in fact come primarily to work, said Miguel Lobato, director of tourism for East Timor.

Some hop over briefly from Indonesia to renew 30-day tourist visas.

"They say, 'What should we do?"' said Susie Mattson, 23, an American who works for an international aid organization and was sitting near Richardson on the beach. "Well, there's stuff to do, but it's really expensive. I always have difficulty recommending things."

The expense mostly involves high-priced airline tickets and poor-quality hotel rooms whose rates are a strain for a low-budget traveler. The top hotel in Dili is the Timor, a functional but charmless hotel, which may rate a couple of stars but charges $90 a night and serves extraordinarily bad food.

The Turismo, slightly less expensive, is a seaside hotel on the eastern side of town that has been there forever with its green patio and fresh ocean breezes. In the same class, the Esplanada, a newer hotel a little to the west, offers pleasant rooms and good food.

It is indeed possible to spend very little for a room in a cheap backpacker hotel, and get what you pay for. There are a dozen or so good restaurants that pitch themselves to foreign aid workers. Places like the Tropical Bakery, the City Café and the One More Bar serve good Western food and are gathering points for the tight-knit foreign community. Dinner for two in rather spartan settings might cost $20 or $25.

All of this is part of the makeshift economy that depends on the spending of the foreign workers. As the United Nations and aid agencies shrink their staffs since East Timor became an independent nation three years ago, the entire national economy has begun to contract and these restaurants will have to struggle to survive.

Tourism is one of the few hopes for a boost to East Timor's economy. But nothing is specifically in place to welcome tourists, and even the secretary of state for tourism, Jose Teixeira, concedes that it will be years before East Timor will be ready to handle large numbers of visitors.

"We need to have a lot of infrastructure," he said in an interview, "including the legal infrastructure for investment. As you know, we started from scratch here."

Always a poor nation, this former Portuguese colony was utterly ruined in 1999, when the Indonesian troops who had occupied it for 24 years were forced to withdraw after a UN-sponsored referendum resulted in a vote for independence. As they left, the soldiers and the Timorese militias they sponsored systematically tore the country apart, burning most of its buildings and wrecking the infrastructure.

East Timor has been peaceful since then, first under a UN administration and then as a self-governing nation. Most of its buildings have been repaired or replaced, although there are occasional power failures. But it remains desperately poor.

Even the little open markets scattered around town are soporific, with vendors spreading meager piles of roots and vegetables on the ground or on small wooden stands. Battered taxis cruise the rutted streets and carry passengers for a bargained price of a few dollars.

And so for the moment, Teixera said, the country can expect to welcome only "a bit of the intrepid sort of travelers."

For people like this, East Timor offers something increasingly rare, the kind of serendipitous adventure that backpackers experienced in the 1960s, when there were still numerous "exotic" destinations where roads were rough, accommodations iffy and food not always readily available. As Tony Wheeler, the founder of the Lonely Planet guidebooks, noted in his newly published guide to East Timor, "Restaurants may be nonexistent in the back blocks, so it's wise to carry food with you, as you can get very hungry before the next market day."

Adventurers find beauty in thickly forested mountains and small, Portuguese-era port towns like Liquiçá and Baucau, with their whitewashed buildings sloping down toward the sea. Perhaps the most enthusiastic adventurers are the scuba divers who have found some of the world's most glorious unexploited dive sites off the coast of East Timor.

"The thing that's special here is that for the most part, you are the only ones at the dive site," said Greg Kintz, an American aid worker who is an avid diver. "The reefs are for the most part undamaged, so when you go down it's absolutely myriads of fish, unbelievable diversity, gorgeous colors."

There are dozens of dive sites along the beaches, where coral reefs are accessible without a boat. There are 25 sites within 30 miles, or 48 kilometers, of Dili alone, said another American diver and aid worker, Nick Hobgood. One is right off the pier at the downtown port, he said, and another at the Com Beach Resort about six hours' drive east of Dili over poor roads. But even enthusiasts warn of one of East Timor's major drawbacks. "It's not easy to get here and you have to go through one of the world-renowned dive sites to get here," said Kintz, noting that geography has dealt East Timor one insurmountable drawback: the primary route to reach it passes through Bali, 700 miles west, a place many visitors never want to leave.

Getting ThereDili can be reached from Denpasar in Bali or from Darwin, Australia. The Denpasar flights are on Merpati Nusantara Airlines, an Indonesian airline, and can be booked through a travel agent or at (62-21) 654-6789 in Jakarta, and cost about $485 round trip. The flights from Darwin, about 440 miles, are on Airnorth, www.airnorth.com.au, starting at about $395 round trip, at $1.34 Australian to the U.S. dollar. The schedules are complicated and should be checked.

On arrival you are asked to pay $30 (the United States dollar is the official currency) for a tourist visa before going through immigration.

There's a $10 departure tax at the airport. Taxis at the airport charge $5 to $7 for the 15-minute ride to the center of town. They cruise the streets for negotiated fares. I paid $2 an hour, although some drivers asked up to $5 an hour.

Where to Stay The Esplanada, Avenida da Portugal (known as Beach Road), (670) 331-3088, fax (670)- 3313-087, www9.hotelesplanada.com, waterfront of Dili is one of the most pleasant hotels in East Timor. The atmosphere is relaxed and comfortable, with 34 rooms in two-story bungalows rooms surrounding a pool. The cost is $99 a night, dropping slightly for longer stays.

A storm of fine, white sand blew across the half-deserted beach as a group of teenagers kicked a soccer ball by the surf; nearby, other youngsters whooped as they raced bicycles along a beachfront road.

It was the end of a lazy afternoon one recent Sunday on the outskirts of Dili, the listless little town that is the capital of East Timor, a poor, almost completely undeveloped nation in the Indian Ocean.

This nation shares roughly half of a narrow island with West Timor, which is part of Indonesia. The two-story town becomes an oven in the midday sun, with mostly jobless men and women strolling slowly past near-empty shops.

Though the weather was perfect and the water crystal clear, this prime beachfront lined with palm trees had an off-season feel to it. Only the low-key Caz Bar and one or two other sunset-watching hangouts seemed alive, with clusters of beer drinkers and a mixture of Western rock and pop music drifting through the air.

Simon Richardson, 23, a volunteer medical worker from Britain, turned his back to the stinging storm of sand as a handful of foreigners mixed with the local beachgoers. He pronounced his verdict on a place that has the potential to be an alluring tourist destination but almost none of the infrastructure to support it.

"There's not a lot to do in the traditional sense," he said. "There's not much night life. It doesn't have all those things like Jet Skiing." Like the other foreigners on the beach, which lies under a towering hilltop statue of Jesus, Richardson was not a tourist. He was one of the small army of aid workers, volunteers and United Nations employees who help keep East Timor - officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste - functioning three years after it emerged from a quarter century of occupation by Indonesia to become an independent nation.

"The main reason to come is it's a new place to come," he said. "I feel like it's becoming safe here and tourism is about to take off in the next 10 years. We can say we were here at the beginning." The government tourism bureau says the nation gets about 500 tourists a month - mostly from China - but virtually all of them have in fact come primarily to work, said Miguel Lobato, director of tourism for East Timor.

Some hop over briefly from Indonesia to renew 30-day tourist visas.

"They say, 'What should we do?"' said Susie Mattson, 23, an American who works for an international aid organization and was sitting near Richardson on the beach. "Well, there's stuff to do, but it's really expensive. I always have difficulty recommending things."

The expense mostly involves high-priced airline tickets and poor-quality hotel rooms whose rates are a strain for a low-budget traveler. The top hotel in Dili is the Timor, a functional but charmless hotel, which may rate a couple of stars but charges $90 a night and serves extraordinarily bad food.

The Turismo, slightly less expensive, is a seaside hotel on the eastern side of town that has been there forever with its green patio and fresh ocean breezes. In the same class, the Esplanada, a newer hotel a little to the west, offers pleasant rooms and good food.

It is indeed possible to spend very little for a room in a cheap backpacker hotel, and get what you pay for. There are a dozen or so good restaurants that pitch themselves to foreign aid workers. Places like the Tropical Bakery, the City Café and the One More Bar serve good Western food and are gathering points for the tight-knit foreign community. Dinner for two in rather spartan settings might cost $20 or $25.

All of this is part of the makeshift economy that depends on the spending of the foreign workers. As the United Nations and aid agencies shrink their staffs since East Timor became an independent nation three years ago, the entire national economy has begun to contract and these restaurants will have to struggle to survive.

Tourism is one of the few hopes for a boost to East Timor's economy. But nothing is specifically in place to welcome tourists, and even the secretary of state for tourism, Jose Teixeira, concedes that it will be years before East Timor will be ready to handle large numbers of visitors.

"We need to have a lot of infrastructure," he said in an interview, "including the legal infrastructure for investment. As you know, we started from scratch here."

Always a poor nation, this former Portuguese colony was utterly ruined in 1999, when the Indonesian troops who had occupied it for 24 years were forced to withdraw after a UN-sponsored referendum resulted in a vote for independence. As they left, the soldiers and the Timorese militias they sponsored systematically tore the country apart, burning most of its buildings and wrecking the infrastructure.

East Timor has been peaceful since then, first under a UN administration and then as a self-governing nation. Most of its buildings have been repaired or replaced, although there are occasional power failures. But it remains desperately poor.

Even the little open markets scattered around town are soporific, with vendors spreading meager piles of roots and vegetables on the ground or on small wooden stands. Battered taxis cruise the rutted streets and carry passengers for a bargained price of a few dollars.

And so for the moment, Teixera said, the country can expect to welcome only "a bit of the intrepid sort of travelers."

For people like this, East Timor offers something increasingly rare, the kind of serendipitous adventure that backpackers experienced in the 1960s, when there were still numerous "exotic" destinations where roads were rough, accommodations iffy and food not always readily available. As Tony Wheeler, the founder of the Lonely Planet guidebooks, noted in his newly published guide to East Timor, "Restaurants may be nonexistent in the back blocks, so it's wise to carry food with you, as you can get very hungry before the next market day."

Adventurers find beauty in thickly forested mountains and small, Portuguese-era port towns like Liquiçá and Baucau, with their whitewashed buildings sloping down toward the sea. Perhaps the most enthusiastic adventurers are the scuba divers who have found some of the world's most glorious unexploited dive sites off the coast of East Timor.

"The thing that's special here is that for the most part, you are the only ones at the dive site," said Greg Kintz, an American aid worker who is an avid diver. "The reefs are for the most part undamaged, so when you go down it's absolutely myriads of fish, unbelievable diversity, gorgeous colors."

There are dozens of dive sites along the beaches, where coral reefs are accessible without a boat. There are 25 sites within 30 miles, or 48 kilometers, of Dili alone, said another American diver and aid worker, Nick Hobgood. One is right off the pier at the downtown port, he said, and another at the Com Beach Resort about six hours' drive east of Dili over poor roads. But even enthusiasts warn of one of East Timor's major drawbacks. "It's not easy to get here and you have to go through one of the world-renowned dive sites to get here," said Kintz, noting that geography has dealt East Timor one insurmountable drawback: the primary route to reach it passes through Bali, 700 miles west, a place many visitors never want to leave.

Getting ThereDili can be reached from Denpasar in Bali or from Darwin, Australia. The Denpasar flights are on Merpati Nusantara Airlines, an Indonesian airline, and can be booked through a travel agent or at (62-21) 654-6789 in Jakarta, and cost about $485 round trip. The flights from Darwin, about 440 miles, are on Airnorth, www.airnorth.com.au, starting at about $395 round trip, at $1.34 Australian to the U.S. dollar. The schedules are complicated and should be checked.

On arrival you are asked to pay $30 (the United States dollar is the official currency) for a tourist visa before going through immigration.

There's a $10 departure tax at the airport. Taxis at the airport charge $5 to $7 for the 15-minute ride to the center of town. They cruise the streets for negotiated fares. I paid $2 an hour, although some drivers asked up to $5 an hour.

Where to Stay The Esplanada, Avenida da Portugal (known as Beach Road), (670) 331-3088, fax (670)- 3313-087, www9.hotelesplanada.com, waterfront of Dili is one of the most pleasant hotels in East Timor. The atmosphere is relaxed and comfortable, with 34 rooms in two-story bungalows rooms surrounding a pool. The cost is $99 a night, dropping slightly for longer stays.


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