It took me longer than it should have to spend some time in Maubisse, a sizeable town located 1,526m above sea level in Ainaro. The climate may be much wetter than in Dili, but the temperature is perfect, about 15C cooler!
The Pousada de Maubisse was closed when I visited in 2024, but was being renovated, and hopefully it will reopen in 2025.
It was built as the mountain retreat for the Portuguese Governor, and was subsequently converted into a hotel, which was operational for a few years, but didn’t survive Covid times.
The Pousada has magnificent views of the surrounding landscape.
The sizeable Church of St. Matthew is hard to miss on the main road.
It is relatively plain inside.
I stayed at Sara Guest House, which with the Pousada closed, was basically the only place to stay, but thankfully it was pretty good by Timorese standards. It had a wonderful roof top area, from which I could sit and enjoy the surrounding landscape, including Mt Rabilau in the distance, which has a shrine at the top. The community of Rabilau run an annual festival, and are developing things for tourists such as scenic lookouts.
Across the road from the guesthouse is this Portuguese era memorial / roundabout.
Next to the guesthouse is a colorful shrine to the Virgin Mary.
Maubisse Cemetery has an interesting position, on a small hill almost completely encircled by the main road.
I was in Maubisse at the start of November, on All Souls’ Day, which is one of the largest Catholic holidays of the year. People gather at the cemetery for mass and leave candles and flowers on the graves of loved ones. This looked quite incredible once night fell.
And in the morning the flowers covering the graves could clearly be seen.
Just south of Maubisse is the community of Hakmatek, who have also been developing eco-tourism (a popular branding in Timor-Leste, which often doesn’t mean much different in reality). One of their main attractions is the Ersalibuti waterfall, which I checked out on my drone, finding as expected that the end of the dry season isn’t the best time to see waterfalls.
