Five reasons to visit Dili, Timor-Leste

GO SHORE-SNORKELLING
Timor-Leste is an untouched haven for diving and snorkelling. It’s almost effortless; walk into the ocean from a few select beaches near Dili and within five metres, you’re swimming with clownfish, zebra fish, angelfish and lion fish as well as giant trevallies, barracudas, Napoleon wrasse and even the occasional dugong, a relative of the manatee.

Backside Beach, K42 and Dollar Beach are all short drives from Dili, and are great for snorkelling, while dive sites such as Bob’s Rock, Secret Garden, Dirt Track and Dili Rock can all be reached on PADI-certified dive trips arranged by the Aquatica dive shop aquaticadiveresort.com. Most are shore dives.
For anyone underwhelmed by trips to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Timor-Leste’s reefs are a revelation; see them before tourism and dynamite fishing unavoidably damages them.
HIKE UP TO CRISTO REI
Backside Beach, just east of Dili, is so named because a statue of Christ the king — the biggest in the world outside of Rio de Janeiro — adorns the clifftop of Cape Fatucamas, but it looks the other way towards Dili. This is a tourist hotspot in more ways than one; 96 per cent of the population is Catholic, and climbing the 580 steps up the hill isn’t easy in temperatures that frequently hit 34 degrees Celsius. However, it’s not a technically difficult walk.
Majestic view: The Cristo Rei of Dili statue overlooks capital East Timor.

Best attempted before breakfast, it’s well worth the effort. After passing by depictions of the 14 stations of the cross, the 27-metre high statue of Christ at the top — built in 1996 by the Indonesian government (Timor-Leste was a province until independence in 1999) — stands on top of an amusingly distorted globe.
The highest vantage point is surrounded by ocean on three sides, with coral reefs visible
on one side, and Dili on the other, though beyond the city’s western limits, you can just glimpse another Christian icon in the distance. Pope John Paul II visited Dili in 1989, and though his six-metre bronze statue also looks out at a wonderful coastline, it sits above a huge car park of United Nations vehicles seemingly abandoned after the 13-year peace-keeping and development mission ended in 2012.
SAMPLE THE SEAFOOD
Seafood is the national cuisine in Timor-Leste. “The sea is big,” say the locals in the loc
al Tetun language if they return empty-handed. But when the fishermen have been successful they string up their catches on bamboo poles and walk the Rua Christo Rei back to the centre of Dili to see if they can attract buyers driving past.
There are clusters of restaurants for both expats (many Australians and other nationalities are in Dili working with NGOs and charity organisations) and partying locals, but seafood lovers should head straight for L’Aubergine. Its Timorese swordfish baked in banana leaves and fennel — called saboko — is delicious. Spanish mackerel is frequently on the menu, too.

Catch of the day: fishermen (above) bring fresh fish to market stalls (below) and restaurants daily (bottom).