Getting out of Maliana was fine as our guesthouse was at the top of the hill so we headed downhill and arrived in Balibo not long after. Victor jumped out the car and asked what seemed to be Pakistani military staff where the Balibo 5 house was. Turns out the guy he spoke to was Major (the officer commanding) and the guy with him, the captain of the Pakistani deployment based just outside Maliana and they were having a day off sighseeing so invited us to morning tea. No sooner had we jumped at the chance and said yes then a full set of tables and chairs arrived in the backgroud. Pakistani hospitality is all that it is made up to be! We became a bit of a tourist attraction with lots of photos being requested ... read more

After a good breakfast of banana bread and tea at the guesthouse we headed back to our beach house to pack up and prepare for the wait for a mikrolet back up the hill. We were told they run on the hour first thing in the morning and we were expecting to wait until 9am but no sooner had we packed up one arrived and we headed back up the hill to Baucau bus terminal to get a bus back west to a place called Manatuto. Before our mikrolet had even arrived at the terminal the touts had jumped on asking if we were going to Dili. We negotiated our way onto the bus that looked most likely to leave first and got some good seats with legroom on the back seat, with the window open ... read more

Today we got up early (ish) to take a bus to Bacau. Dili was pretty quiet at this time compared to the rush hour the day before so we were able to cross the road with our backpacks on without getting ourselves killed. A short walk later and we hit the back of the line of buses for Baucau and were hussled by touts. We got onto the next available bus which only had a couple of seats left so we figured it would depart soon. 30 minutes later we left, bus drivers rev their engines like they are about to go in an attempt to drum up more business when they guys who have paid to hang out the doors jumped on we thought we were sure to go but 10 minutes later we finally ... read more

Visas. One of the fundamentals of travel, had been carefully worked out and timings carefully scheduled. We even thought of whether we'd need them for transit countries, or so we thought... Then we got to Wellington airport and nearly didn't go anywhere. We were flying via Sydney to Darwin where we were overnighting before hopping over to Dili, the capital of East Timor. Its only Oz and we're NZ citizens now so have got the mindset that we an go an live and work there whenever we want. Which of course we can, but not when we're travellingon on our British passports. we both panicked momentarily at the mention of visas at the check in. Umm how can we get on we tentatively asked, oh just walk over to the ticketing desk and they can do ... read more

We said goodbye to the Andes via a 2 hour true winding mountain road through spectacular scenery - huge steep mountains dropping down into a deep gorge. With every metre we descended the temperature rose until eventually we were in hot, dry Barinas. We did the rounds of bus companies for the last time, looking for ones that go overnight to Caracas and secured our tickets for our last South American bus. With over 12 hours to kill we found somewhere to dump off our big rucksacks and caught a local bus into the town centre where we spent the rest of the working day in banks trying (unsuccessfully) to get some money before we ran out completely. We returned to the bus terminal pretty frustrated, particularly after trying to buy some food on Visa, when ... read more