Looking out from Wata Bo’o beach, I saw a calm blue sea, the water unruffled, disrupted only intermittently by the splash of a leaping silvery fish. This serene tropical outpost, a thousand miles east of Bali, felt like it might have always been like this. Except the beach has had a troubled history. The Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese and most recently, the Indonesians, battled over it. With mass atrocities in living memory — they only gained independence from Indonesia 21 years ago — the focus here is on survival and rebuilding the country, rather than attracting tourists. So far? Few come.
But that might be about to change. The word is out that the North shore of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, formerly East Timor, might be one of the world’s great ocean destinations, part of a marine migration superhighway with blue whales, sperm whales, fin whales, orcas, pilot whales, false killer whales, whale sharks, melon-headed whales, oceanic manta rays and more. Could this largely forgotten new nation — actually half an island (the other half of Timor belongs to Indonesia) — hold all of this?
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