Travels with Charlie in… Beers in Pacific Cities that Start with “D” for 200, Alex: Part 6

Just joining? Be sure to go back and start reading at Part 1.

As I once was made victim of a theory that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was set at midwinter (I don’t remember the theory; it somewhat made sense at the time but I was young, impressionable, and, my glorious reader, even more foolish then (hard as that might be to imagine!)) I find no fear this June in discussing New Years Eve. It was warm, after all, in Dili.

We were well met by moonlight.

The hotel-capping roof under which we slept billeted a bar which, as sun set on 2025, hosted the great and mediocre of Dili. We three were there (“the great”, naturally) alongside unnumbered Chinese businessmen and the Cuban ambassador (you decide into which category they slip and let me know. We’ll publish the results, one day.) Allegedly, dinner was served. Vodka certainly was.

As midnight approached, the party picked up. We three, perspiring pilings afloat amongst celestial tides, set our individual intentions for the shortly arriving annum (intentions lost to time and the aforementioned vodka. I remember someone singing and a bunch of boys cursing and laughing after one of their brood fell into a fountain.

And then I remember a ring of fire erupting around us as seemingly every house and hovel in town set light to the past in jubilant expectation, perhaps naïve, perhaps desperate, of the year begun.

I awoke around midday on January first and, after a brunch of chicken salad and dragon chasing (the Chinese version, I am told, of “hair of the dog,”) an incredibly delayed taxi drove us to the beach-side starting point of our hike. Dear reader: you read that correctly. I, Charles Rudish, spent the first day of this year, walking up a small mountain. On our assent, we passed Stations of the Cross (recall the Catholicism of the country.) We climbed concrete stairs so far flung from the cliffs they were meant to skirt I remain shocked we didn’t fall. And finally, after longer than I’d care to admit and completely breathless, we arrived at the summit and its statue of Christ the Redeemer.

As oxen were unloosened and the sun sank into the wine-dark sea, I didn’t wish to leave. Mountain-topped and featherheaded, I was content. Perhaps the Christ above me, paradoxically, grounded me. Perhaps I was merely hungover and tired and trepidatious of the hike back down and the traffic that awaited. Still: I had a sense up there, just outside the capital of a country of which most people had never heard, of being somewhere so very far from Florida and yet, oddly, at home.

And then I was impressed.

About Travels with Charlie

Name a country, city, island, restaurant or ballet performance and you can bet Charles Rudish has been there. Follow along as he documents his adventures around the world with this ongoing series. Charles offers a humorous and insightful perspective on travel, culture and exploring the world around you.