Yes, You Can Lock Your Keys In A Motorbike

When I was in my (very) early teens, my mother ran out of petrol while taking me home from school. She set off, on foot, for the petrol station.

I watched her trudge round the corner. Then, once she was out of range, I stepped out of the car for a sneaky cigarette and a couple of Polos to take the smell away.

I then returned to the vehicle and realised I’d locked the keys in it.

She got back. She wasn’t, umm, happy.

And even though I lied a blinder — it took two or three more years before my parents noticed I smoked — it wasn’t a high point of our parent-child dynamic.

Now, I haven’t remembered this incident for years.

But, high up a hill, deep in the mist, in the central mountains of Timor Leste, as my spawn looks balefully at me and begins to swear, I begin to realise we might be hitting a similar low point…

We are en route to Maubisse, you see, a hill town in the mountains of Timor Leste where there is something I’ve heard described first as a Portuguese fort, then as a Portuguese government guesthouse, and on both times as the most amazing place to stay in East Timor.

It’s shockingly cold, dense with mist, and the arrow on the fuel gauge of our motorbike is pointing at the middle of empty. Now I know it can point to below empty before we actually run out.

But I have no idea how much further we have to go.

I’ve heard estimates of the distance from Dili to Maubisse that range between “40k, takes you 3 hours” to “80 k, takes you five hours”, to “far, far, very far!” to “there and back in a day if you hit trouble”. None of these are particularly helpful.

We’ve climbed through dazzling mountains, with stone pines and gums, through golden valleys of rice terraces, past huts decorated in elaborate bamboo, over valleys with spreading stone rivers…

In the town of Aileu, we’ve passed a memorial, asked the distance, and found we have only 25k to go.

And now, we are almost out of gas. The way markers all point to the coast. And it is surreally, goose-bumpingly, uncomfortably cold.

I’m still on Indonesia thinking, you see. And even in the wildest parts of Indonesia, the motorbike is such a big part of life that, where there are roads, there are shacks, each with two (sometimes more) mineral water bottles holding liquids coloured from pale piss to sludgy brown and sold as petrol.

Here, whenever I’ve asked someone about petrol, and they’ve understood me –- for, despite 25+ years of occupation, there’s really not much Indonesian, let alone English, spoken in the mountains of Timor Leste –- they’ve said I can get it in Maubisse.

Which is great. Because we are going to Maubisse.

But not so good, since I don’t think we have enough fuel to get there.

So I’ve stopped at this shack to ask about petrol/benzin/whatever. I’ve opened the seat of the bike to expose the fuel tank and used sign language.

The lady has indicated they definitely do not have what I need, so I have closed the bike seat.

And lo!

I realise that I put the key down on the fuel tank, so it is now locked in the bike.

For, yay, you really can lock your keys in a motorbike! Who knew?!

“You are a f*cking moron, Mum,” Z opines, as the scale of the mini-catastrophe becomes clear. “This is unbelievable. I’m cold. I’m hungry. And you’ve locked the keys in the bike. This is epic.”

“Why don’t you put your poncho on?” I say, detouring around the issue. “That will give you an extra layer.”

“Because it has cr*p all over it,” he says. “It’s wet inside AND out.”

“It’s still an extra layer,” I say. “And it’s bl**dy cold up here.”

We are staring balefully at each other across the bike when the first foreigners we’ve seen since Dili appear through the mist, sporting backpacks, heavy jackets and a general hearty, hiking air.

“Run out of petrol?” one says.

“Umm…” I begin.

“You can freewheel down this hill. Everyone does it. It’s full of silent motorbikes.”

“What’s down the hill?” I ask.

“Maubisse,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “The problem’s not precisely gas. I’ve, umm, locked the keys in the bike.”

“Oh,” he says. His companions try not to laugh.

We cluster and stare helplessly at the bike. I am at, arguably, my most attractive in my plastic blue-grey-lime rain mac with matching plastic blue pants and knackered flipflops protruding from the bottom.

Z is in his fleece and jeans, his blue plastic poncho over one arm in an attitude that declares, “This shall not be worn.”

“Yeah,” our new friend says. “I don’t know Maubisse will be much help for that. There’s not a lot there.”

“Oh,” I say. “I thought there was a sort of governor’s mansion cum guest house thing, the pousada?”

“Yeah,” he says. “There’s that. It’s a bit mouldy, but it must have been quite special in its day.”

We swap some tips on stuff to do in Timor Leste. They were on some route around the north coast, but they’ve just found out the road is closed.

“Is it downhill all the way?” I ask.

“Yep,” he says. I gear myself for a rolling entrance to town and start thinking about the sign language I’ll need.

A strained grunt comes from my spawn. “Mum!” he says.

He has, somehow, prised the seat up sufficiently far off the fuel tank that…

“I think I can get it!” I say.

His little fingers are turning red with strain.

I shove three fingers in, grapple for the key. It slides.

I wriggle. I feel the edge of its lucky charm keyring!

I pull it out.

I have the key!

“OK, honey,” I say. “You can call me all the names you want, now.”

“Let’s just go, already,” he says. He’s starting to shiver.

“Do you want to put your poncho on?” I ask.

He gives me the finger.

I don’t, honestly, blame him.

Maubisse is on the mist frontier. We emerge from the mist down into a tiny market town, where the older men wear leather cowboy hats over traditional turbans, the old women have betel lips and spangly head-dresses, and a finely dressed crowd is blocking the street en route from -– I honestly can’t guess whether it’s an animist ritual, Catholic ceremony or political meeting.

“Can you tell me the way to the Pousada?” I ask a passing gentlechap, in Indonesian. He’s 60ish, with a fine and only-slightly nicotined moustache, a florid sarong and the de rigeur cowboy hat.

“?-/*&%?*^%%@%$£@Z%$,” he replies.

He might be speaking Tetum-Dili, the Portuguese creole that’s spoken here, or pure Tetum. He could be speaking Lakalei, Idate or Mambai. (There are 20 “indigenous” languages in Timor, from both Papuan and Austronesian language families.)

He appears, however, to think he’s speaking Portuguese.

It doesn’t sound like Portuguese to me.

“Can you speak Indonesian?” I ask, in Indonesian.

“&@(!%*&^@%$! Indonesia &^%($(*” he says, accompanying it with vigorous hand gestures, indicating that people don’t like Indonesians round here and kicked them out good and proper long ago so *of course* no one speaks the language.

I’m glad that I don’t look Indonesian. “Yes,” I say, in Indonesian. “People here don’t like the Indonesians.”

“Mum,” says Z, staring in horror at our interlocutor’s teeth, which are stained a deep, thorough black that tends, bizarrely, to purple as it reaches the gums. “I think we should go.”

Our interlocutor is keen to chat more. I catch the words “Portugues” and “pousada”.

In this linguistic tight corner, I decide that one can reasonably approximate Portuguese by taking Spanish, turning the ns to ms, the que-s to hard-c-s and pushing all the vowels high up in your nose.

The problem is, my Spanish is not Spanish but an optimistic combination of graduate Latin and schoolgirl French with different endings and accents.

Anywise, I give it a go. “Nao. Nao possibile Portugues!” I say. “Yao Inglesa. Nao comprendao Portugues.”

“I really think we should just go,” says Z.

This conversation is, after all, going nowhere, fast. “Obligada! Senhor!” I say. “Obligada!” I wave.

We hang a left at the occupation monument and ascend a winding, broken aerial causeway, which must once have been a grand, paved road, but is now largely rubble. Climbing through the clouds, with battlements shielding the valley, is eerie. Like the ascent to Dracula’s Castle, just on a motorbike.

“Did you see his teeth?” Z hisses, once a safe distance has passed.

“Yeah,” I say. “But that was a great moustache.”

I ascend past one grand gateway to a second grand gateway, lined with flowers, one wary eye on our remaining petrol. We head through the gateway, across what is now less rubble, more gravel, to a place where formal steps lead up to what is, even in dense mist, clearly a formal garden, laid out in the classical cruciform design with circular beds in the centre of four square lawns.

There are topiarised trees. Struggling roses. Spiny, geometric cacti.

We park. We ascend the stairs. And, yea! There is a room for the night.

It’s kind of basic. There’s no leccy till 6.30, and the bathroom is not inviting.

It is also bloody freezing.

But the gardens pretty much make up for it, from my perspective. Plus, the room is clean. The sheets are clean. The pillow cases are clean. And they have a top sheet under the quilt.

“You have food?” I ask the guy, in Indonesian.

“Yes!” he says. “We have chicken or beef.”

“One beef, one chicken?” I ask.

“Maybe chicken only,” he says.

“Chicken is fine,” I say.

“What time you want to eat?” he asks. “7?”

“Maybe 6, 6.30?” I say.

“7,” he says, texting someone, I assume the cook, on his mobile phone.

“Sure,” I say. “Chicken at 7. That sounds lovely.”

Now I knew Maubisse was over 1500k above sea level, surrounded by mountains. But I didn’t know this was the coldest time of year in East Timor.

So I’d packed down for our trip here. We have a layer, and waterproofs.

But it honestly hadn’t occurred to me that, given we’d been sweating in shorts at the coast, it could possibly be so cold at only 1500m that you’d need more than an extra layer and a waterproof.

Z jumps under the covers. “What are we going to do now?” he asks.

“Get warm?” I say. “Wait till the leccy comes on?”

“I don’t see a heater in this room,” he says. “Did we bring my laptop? That gives out a lot of heat.”

We didn’t bring his laptop. So we push the beds together, share our quilts, and switch on The Killing Fields on my laptop. It doesn’t pump out much heat.

Our socks, like our exra layers, are in Dili. I’ve been smoking since I was 12, so my circulation’s shot, but Z’s feet are also like blocks of ice.

At 7, we are summoned for dinner. There is a fireplace in the main house, and –- mirabile visu! -– an open fire.

It’s a real hallelujah moment. The warmth is dazzling.

And more, as we reach our table.

“My god,” says Z. “Is this vinegar? It looks like mild vinegar! Proper vinegar! Wine vinegar!”

We have, indeed, a full cruet. There are fried potatoes with our chicken, which comes in a light tomato sauce. There is vinegar to eat the fries with. There is a dish of sautéed vegetables and a separate dish of rice. They have cold beer, and cold Coca-Cola.

It is bloody delicious.

And the other family staying there are great.

Our feet defrost in a second. We sleep a beautiful night.

And when we get up in the morning, and see the light falling on the formal gardens, our pinnacle within the valley surrounded by still higher mountains, it is one of the more beautiful views I’ve seen.

Maubisse? It’s worth it (I think; Z thinks differently). But do bring layers. And warm nightclothes.

A good breakfast, good dinner, a room and a couple of drinks ran us $34 at the Pousada Maubisse, which is excellent value for Timor Leste.