Stranger in a foreign land
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Thu 2 Dec 2010 12:33
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Thursday 2nd December 0953 Local time 0153
UTC
09:55.53S 122:54.01E
On waking up on Tuesday morning anchored off the
shore in Kupang the familiar sights, sounds and smells of South East Asia
asserted themselves through the sticky hot morning air. We tried to raise our
agent by VHF but to no avail.
So Trish dropped me off with the RIB at
the steps (I later learned) marking the spot where Captain Bligh had
come ashore in 1789. I headed up the steps into the thronging, noisy, chaotic
front street that runs along parallel to the shore in Kupang. Motorbikes (we
would call them scooters or mopeds) were everywhere in their thousands carrying
between one and five people and every kind of cargo from about a hundred
chickens to heaped sacks of rice.
I was the focus of a lot of attention, being the
only white person around and was greeted with smiles, "hello mister....." or a
wave. It all seemed friendly enough so I set out along the street looking
for anything that looked like Customs or Immigration or in the hope of
bumping into our "agent".
You mnay wonder how on earth one can come into
a strange town or in fact a strange country "blind", and with no common
language in a yacht.
First there is the route. I mean the route round
the world. That is a long established trade wind route and the rough program and
route can be found in "Cruising Routes of the World" or other such books. I have
also read a tremendous amount of books by sailors who have gone before us.
Then there are your charts which help with
planning a route and your stop-overs. Most importantly are Pilot Books which
give advice and information on anchorages but also Ports of Clearance into
countries and the relevant regulations. In addition there is the internet and
most helpfully www.noonsite.com which
gives updated info from other cruisers on experiences, regulations and
formalities etc. We have also found a very good source of information to be the
Lonely Planet books which we have a good stock of for the lesser known cruising
areas. There is also word of mouth and it is important to visit and share
information with fellow cruisers (if they can be found in these parts at this
time of year!).
All in all that information together with a liberal
sprinkling of adventurous interpretation of it all and common sense, then our
route and program is shaped. Of course we sometime head way off plan as our
experiences shape our route. But ultimately our own timetable and the seasonal
wind and weather patterns dictate the program. You can also just join a
rally and have all this mapped out for you and you can then concentrate on other
things.
My first tactic as always when we come into
somewhere new is to head ashore - generally alone and armed only with with a
smile and a willingness to engage the local people. Trish often stays aboard
till I get the lay of the land. Not for any specific reason but just to get the
boat in order, potter around and to get a valuable hour or so
alone.
So it was I was strolling down the street in
Kupang, kind of prostituting myself so to speak, hoping someone would take
me on and to see where that would lead and what I could find out. I really did
not want to try to do Customs myself here as the process was renowned for being
long winded and full of currupt officials so I hoped I would somehow meet our
agent. This guy was recommended to us by another agent based in Jakarta who
processed our Cruising Permit for us (C.A.I.T).
About 500m along some guy called me into a
ramshackle bar. He had reasonable English and I
told him who I was looking for. He called my man
and 10 minutes later there I was handing over passports, boat papers, and
Australian clearance documents to him.
I had heard some vague stories about one of
the rallies being chased out of Kupang so I wanted a good "guy on the
ground" who knew how it worked. Obviously he would want paid and that was fine.
The payment was cheap compared to me spending a whole day trying to work out who
to visit and in which order with no common language and stinking humidity and
very high temperatures. I would also inevitably be forced into tense situations
with some of the officials. So as the pilot book gave no detailed instructions
about clearing in, other than naming a couple of agents I hired the agent. If he
had to grease palms then that was his business I was free to get on with
exploring Timor. He had my Passports but of course I kept the
money.
That done having bought a couple of soft drinks
from the bar owner, I asked about exporing the island. As he was a quasi-
tourist information centre also he organised a guide and translator to come
and meet which he then did.
We planned a full on two day tour round West
Timor. We explained we wanted to get off the beaten track and to gain
some understanding of the local culture, peole and cuisine and especially the
village life.
In an hour it was all wrapped up, guide and
translator, paperwork taken care of and a good contact on the ground (you
can reference each contact with the others - then show a bit of good faith
and trust ) and I called Trish to come ashore with the rib and our lap
tops as we could get free wi-fi in this bar. Lavalon it was called and the
proprieter Edwin (our man on the ground!) was very keen to promote tourism and
was also extremely keen on the story of the Bounty Mutiny and Captain
Bligh's landfall in Kupang. He was facinated therefor when I told him of the
people we met in Tonga who said they were Bligh's bloodline. I was able
to lend him my copy of the booklet that I had got in Tonga about this and
also lend him our CD collection for a couple of days when we would
be away.
Our agent Napa Rachman took care of everything and
we caught up on communications while he did that. During the day we headed off
on a "Bemo" with him to the other side of town to try out a local restaurant and
to learn a bit more about the way of things in these parts. We also
arranged 800litres of fuel with him. He got a small local fishing boat to take
out the four by 200l drums and it was pumped aboard through a filter in the cool
of the evening. We arranged for one guy to watch our RIB on the shore and our
agent to sleep aboard Rhiann Marie while we explored Timor. This was all part of
the agents fee and is one of the side benefits from putting a little something
into the local economy.
Excellent! Just to get up at 0430 and be on the
shore at 0530 to head for the hills. There is too much to tell you about that so
I will tell you about it in the next blog.
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