Since arriving in Dili, I had been woken every day by the call of the muezzin at 5:30 a.m. With its historical Portuguese background, I had been under the impression that Timor-Leste (also known as East Timor) would be predominantly Christian. But the mosque behind the guest house where I was staying reminded me that the country had also been under Indonesian rule for almost 25 years, from 1975 to 1999. So, the Muslim influence made sense.

Other research on the internet did not give Timor-Leste’s dive secrets away. Located within the Coral Triangle, which contains the most marine biodiversity on the planet, it was boasted to be some of the most biodiverse and pristine diving left on earth—an untouched area and mostly not dived. But there were so few dive reports or pictures; it seemed like few people were diving there, or even going into the country. I wanted to find out about this off-the-beaten-path destination and experience it for myself.

Tasi Tolu gets its name from the three fresh water lakes just inland from the beach and below the nearby foothills. During the rainy season, the lakes tend to fill to capacity and then overflow, flooding the nearby road and villages. To prevent that from happening, the government commissioned a project to provide a drainage channel for the overflow to run off into the sea. This design, which took the most logical path, would have dumped the outflow right onto the Tasi Tolu site.

But as the crocodile grew older, and the time came for it to die, it told the young man it would transform itself into a beautiful island where he and his children could live until the sun sank into the sea…

The tale of the boy and his cold-blooded friend is told often in Timor to explain the island’s crocodile-like shape and why the Timorese have a special affinity with the large reptile that is said to inhabit the creeks and pools along much of the south coast of the country.