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Above Ossu in the heart of the Mundo Perdidu is a Cross on a hill. A path follows the 'Stations of the Cross' to the summit for a spectacular view across the mountains of Timor.
From Dili, Ossu is a 180 km drive, first east along the coast to Bacau, then south to Venilale and beyond.
After Venilale, the world changes....off to the east you can see the high and daunting shoulders of Matebian, Timor’s second highest peak, dominating the landscape.... and ahead the apparently impenetrable fortress of Mundo Perdidu, Timor’s very own ‘Lost World’ which you must cross before you descend towards the south coast.
It was in these craggy limestone mountains that the Fretelin guerrillas withstood all the Indonesian military could hurl at them for two decades or more. A place of long memories and no doubt a place of many ghosts, which, viewed through another eye, is not dissimilar to the high Dolomites of the Italian Alps on a fine day but with one thing missing, the odd ski lift here or there......there are in their place, at each coll that Hilda took us over, the red and white Telecom towers put in by the Indonesians in their efforts to colonise and subdue this savage land.....towers now maintained and guarded by the UN.......
Ossu is the little town that snuggles right beneath and actually within Timor’s ‘Lost World’ of Mundo Perdidu.
Opposite the Mercado Municipal and in front of the Colegio Padre Manuel Luis is the Church. Our trail starts there:
S 08°44’37.8”
E 126°23’06.5”
Elevation 2,155’
Look up and on top of the crag above the town is a big bold cross set on a plinth behind a decaying cement balustrade.
Too good to miss, we must get up there and set a cache!
Sure enough, a few strides across the street, the rubbly remnants of a road appear and beside it what looks suspiciously like a ‘Station of the Cross’....There MUST be a track from the Church to the Cross atop the hill, this is Timor after all.........
A few hundred yards takes you to the other, forgotten, world of colonial Portuguese Timor.
A crumbling villa, a huge tree, swathes of red lilies, the ramparts of the old Pousada fortifications across the valley and as surely as night follows day in these places, elegant curving steps and broken down balustrades leading up to the inevitable Grotty Grotto, now sadly a ruin....
S 08°44’38.3”
E 126°23’15.6”
Elevation 2,177’
It could be a Hollywood movie set, all you need is the heroine in a flowing gown rushing tearfully up the steps into the arms of her long lost lover.
However, we have a cache to set up at the Cross - Mundo Perdidu view’.
Walking up the old track from the beneath the Grotty Grotto you will pass more ‘Stations of the Cross’.......and each hairpin bend in the track reveals an ever more stunning view across the whole archipelago of the Mundo Perdidu. It’s like Switzerland, no Peru, Scotland???? It’s just spectacular, breathtaking and we nearly missed it.
The hill we are climbing, it turns out, has two summits, one with a Church on it and the other, nearer the town, with the Cross set on a high concrete pedestal founded on a huge limestone boulder.
Seven steps lead up to the platform just below the final ascent to the cross and right there we find the perfect place to hide our:
‘Empty beer can in a hideous green plastic container geocache’
Which is duly hidden behind a limestone boulder in one of the big holes in the rock beneath the cross.........at an elevation of 2,483’it is our highest cache to date!!
If any Geocachers do find this unrefreshing treasure, they’ll curse us for the empty beer can but stay a long while to soak up the view across Ossu and into the heart of Timor’s Lost World....eat your heart out Conan Doyle!!!!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Bhe ubeevsvpnyyl terra cynfgvp pnpur vf ng rlr yriry, oruvaq n yvzrfgbar ebpx va n pnivgl va gur obhyqre gung vf gur sbhaqngvba gb gur Pebff.