An unexpected treat travelling into Bobonaro municipality was spending time in Atabae, somewhere that most people just drive through on their way to Balibo or Maliana. I haven’t seen many rice fields on my travels though so I was pretty blown away by what I saw…

This was my first trip with a drone so I was able to get a different perspective, and appreciate more than possible from the road, how close the sea is!

The drone allowed me to get some good coastal views, see agriculture from above, explore the Atabae cemetery, and find this abandoned building up the hill behind the church.

I walked out to Igreja São Francisco de Assis, to find that it was being replaced with a much larger building. This is common in Timor-Leste with many new churches being built in the past few years.

I was helping with a workshop held at the sub-district office, which had a couple of interesting looking monuments by it.

There were plenty of colourful houses in Atabae, and tums-tums heading up and down the main road.

A highlight of my time in Atabae was a yummy dinner and refreshing dragon fruit juice at the excellent D² “Uma Kafé”.

I watched the sunset over the rice fields from the rooftop of D² “Uma Kafé”. A pretty magical experience.

It was another good opportunity to use the drone.