bats, caves, and spikes

Flew to the little village of Mulu from Miri on a tiny plane the 14th of august, which is basically the only way to get there unless you charter lots of different private boats to take you for the 12 hour trip by boat. Like I had mentioned earlier, I was supposed to be on the morning flight, but the tour operator screwed up and I was only able to get onto the afternoon flight. He assured me this would be ok as the plane would arrive in time to still see all the caves. Unfortunately the plane was delayed though. The flight into Mulu was beautiful looking down on big rainforest covered karst mountains as we landed. When we landed, even though we were late, the tour organizers were disorganized and we wasted some time while they figured things out. But finally we got to go to the park. It's a 3km walk along a boardwalk to get to the two caves. It's normally a nice nature walk with some good information signs to read along the way, but our guide told us to hurry along so we could get to the caves. That wasn't such a big deal as I'd seen lots and lots of jungle so far on this trip. So I moved along quite quickly to make it to the caves. Went into Lang's cave first, which was huge and had some really nice cave formations like stalactites and stalagmites. Went through it pretty quickly, but still get a good appreciation of it. The next cave was Deer cave, which has the largest cave passage in the world. And it was truly impressive. Unbelievable really. It was so huge. As one of the guide's later said, you could fit St. Peter's Basilica in it. And once inside, you could look out of it into the sunlit and beautiful rainforest outside through the huge entrance. Halfway into it, you could turn around and see ole honest abe's profile in the rock against the lit opening, which was pretty cool. I continued further in for a while, but turned around for fear of missing the bat show later on. Turns out I probably wasn't that far from the end anyways Further past the abe viewpoint the cave stayed just as large. Really amazing how much it dwarfed everyone inside. A cool thing about these caves as they were lit up by lights inside, which made you appreciate the caves that much more than just with a weak torch light. After leaving the cave, I walked to the bat observatory area where at dusk millions of bats usually flood out of the cave to hunt for insects or pollen, replaced by swiftlets coming inside. As dusk approached, it started to rain, which was disheartening b/c the guide said that the bats don't come out if it's raining and had been dry for some time (It hadn't rained there in over 2 weeks as they were on a drought), so it was likely that the bats were well fed and wouldn't not come out into the rain. Over half the tourists left, but this was my one shot to see it, so I waited. Eventually the rain turned to just a drizzle and the bats started streaming out in these large groups out of the gigantic cave entrance. It looked a lot like smoke coming out of the entrance. And then after they'd left, they'd still stay together in a long, skinny swarm that moved around in a curvy direction, making them look like a giant black snake in the sky. It was definitely an impressive sight.

That night I met the two other people I'd be climbing and treking with, Hannah (a phD student in Ghent) and David (a post grad plant pathologist in Ghent). That was quite cool for me b/c Ghent is a place I know well having had to go there on 3 separate occassions with sapidyne for work. They were a very cool couple and I liked them a lot. They had a good sense of humor and we laughed and joked a lot, especially about the tour operators, which made it all the more fun. That night we were supposed to have a briefing about the trip, but one other person was supposed to be climbing with us, a chinese guy, and they couldn't find him. They weren't sure whether he was lost in the caves, lost in mulu, or just didn't make the plane flight. Of course this made the belgians and I laugh a bit, in a rather nevrous manner. Turns out there was no chinese guy ever and they were just mixing him up with a malaysian guy. The tour had already been a bit crazy with me not having my flight booked, the disoranization at the airport, not having a guide for the 1st two caves as he told us to run ahead, and then the lost chinese guy. We also laughed about these 3 dutch guys. They really stood out as they were huge, I mean gigantic. Tall and built like chris sherman (!!), which is to say, built like a tank. No, they were probably the biggest and toughest looking guys I had ever seen in person, and in asia amongst short asians and skinny travellers, they really stood out. Partly because of the mist and rain that we walked through when going to view the bats, Hannah and David called them Gorillas in the Mist. They always made for a good laugh and smile though.

The next morning, we boarded little motorized canoes, with the Gorillas, and headed up river on a very scenice and narrow river through the rainforest and between karst cliffs and mountains. We stopped quickly at a new penan settlement, mainly so we could sadly buy their trinkets since these penans were no longer able to be nomadic hunters due to the oil palm plantation nearby. After visting the settlement we went further upstream, again, through beautiful scenery until we docked the boat and hiked a bit to get to the next cave. Cave of the winds. This cave was much prettier than the 1st two caves we had seen, with nice stalagmites and stalactited. And it was also nice b/c we could go more slowly through this one and look at it better and read the information placards. After that cave we went into the smaller young lady cave, and then into the large Clearwater cave. It's one of the longest caves in the world at 151km's long, but it also has gigantic rooms as well. We walked into this for a while until we reached a large river inside. We went into it to get wet and have a drink b/c it supposedly makes you younger.

After the cave, we had lunch, and then went for a swim in the aqua water below the lunch site where water was bubbling out from the cave.

It was quite funny to watch the pool after we had swam b/c the dutch gorillas went in for a swim and they of course wore the tiniest speedos possible and played around and made lots of whooping and loud sounds, so that it sounded like wild animals echoing off the cliffs. Turns out they were swimmers on the dutch national team, and it was quite funny to hear how many other tourists had seen them around borneo or KL just b/c they stood out so much.

After the swim we hopped back in the boat, but this time just hannah and david and I as we had to leave the gorillas in the mist behind as they were on a different tour...we assumed they must be doing the trek we were doing except in one afternoon instead of 3 days, but we always held out hope that we would run into them at camp 5 again. We went further up river, at times having to get out and push the boat as the river was low due to the drought (that ended while we were there). We pulled up on shore and got all ready for the hike, which takes a little bit b/c we dried our feet, put on our leech socks (in my case) or leech gaitors (in there case) and laced up our shoes. The whole time, our new guide, Gibson, just sat and watched. As soon as we were all ready, we walked about 10 feet and were in front of a stream that we had to wade through. So we had to take everything off and go across. Laughing in disbelief that gibson had watched us all get ready only to have a another crossing just seconds away. After that though, it was an easy 8kms to camp 5. Early on gibson told us to go ahead and he fell far behind. So once again, there we were without a guide (not a problem, just funny since it's required and we were paying for one). We walked over half of the 8kms in a torrential downpour and were soaked with sweat and rain by the time we got to camp 5. As soon as I got to camp 5 I jumped into the river and just sat in it, b/c it was rather warm, but still refreshing for an hour or so, talking to this really bubbly woman named helen (who we liked to laugh about too b/c you could always hear helen talking loudly somewhere) from New Zealand who was doing this trek for her birthday. There were about 20 people at the camp, divided into 4 groups of differing economic standings. There were the people there not on a package tour, which is how i'd normally do it, except as a lone traveller it's much more expensive to do it all on your own and not guarenteed you'll meet anyone once there. These guys had a guide, but no cook or anything, so they would eat crackers, cookies, uncooked noodles, and cold canned beans for meals. There was us on the budget trip with decent but simple meals and cold tea and coffee. We had a lot of food though, and I would often slip some of our extra food under the table to the non packaged tour people b/c I could feel there pain as I'd been there before. There was helen's group, a rather large group doing a 4 week packabe tour with intrepid. So they were well taken care of with their personal guide for the trip, plus the mulu guide. Then there was Michael (swedish) and Severna (french) who were dating and living in barcelona that were on more of a luxury tour. We liked them a lot. Michael had been a backpacker in his day, but was taking Severna on her first trekking experience and they were going luxury, and you could tell because Severna was dressed beautifully like she was at some fancy african safari camp or something. They often shared their fancy snacks with us, which was always appreciated. The trip up to the pinnacles that day had been cancelled, so during our briefing that night it was explained that if it was raining in the morning, our trip too would be cancelled. I was quite nervous about this and did not sleep well that night for fear of hearing that rain that had finally ended around 6pm. We also found out that night that Lee, a malaysian guy would be joining us. He had been put on the wrong boat and taken to the wrong place originally by our tour operator, but was now with us.



But we woke up to clear skies. Breakfast for our group was of course late, which could be potentially a problem as you had until 11am to reach this one point on the climb, and if you didn't make it, you had to turn around. We were also told we'd have two guides Augustus and Gibson so that Augustus could go with the fast people and Gibson with the slower people to make sure that if the slow people wouldn't make it, at least the fast people would. Well, once we got on the trail, gibson wasn't there and when we asked Augustus, he just shrugged and said he didn't know. During the briefing they had really scared us that this was some extremely touch climb, etc, etc. It was no doubt steep and went up in elevation 3,500 feet in 2.4kms, but to me it wasn't too difficult. Perhaps like climbing the trough on Longs pk or the gully between meeker and longs, except without high altitude and without scree--roots instead of loose rocks. Everyone seemed to really be struggling and overheating and just having a rough time. I was of course as sweaty as I'd ever been, but was not having trouble, so I eventually just went on ahead of everyone wanting to make it to the top before the weather came in. The last .4km's is extremely steep where there is a fair bit of climbing, or using ropes to get up rocks, or even a bunch of letters. I found this quite fun, but it scared a lot I think. Around 10am I made it to the top of Mt. Api, but I couldn't see the pinnacles as they were shrouded in mist. I was worried that I wouldn't have a chance to see them after coming all that way, but eventually the mist blew by and I got a nice look at them. The pinnacles are this impressive grouping of giant razor sharp limestone needles sticking out of the jungle. We sat and watched the mist roll in and out for a while before heading down, which was by far the worst part. So slippery and steep that you had to concentrate at all times, and even so I slipped down a couple times. You had to grab onto ropes, trees, roots, whatever you could to keep from sliding down. It just took me a little over two hours to go down, but that was long enough, especially after it started to rain. 3 hours after I'd been down, already had my swim at camp 5, but was still awaiting my cold tea and stale biscuits from my tour company as everyone else enjoyed theres, helen, trevor, and the rest of my group still wasn't down. I was getting a bit worried especially after it just started to pour and pour and pour some more. An incredible rain. But eventually they made it back, completely soaked. David had his passport ruined by the rain and poor lee had his camera and cell phone break. A good example as to why I bought a waterproof stuff sack for my valuables. That night was more laughs as we laughed a lot at the expense of gibson who was napping when I came down from the trek as opposed to climbing it with us as he was supposed to. We figure he must have been like a relative of the tour owner or something. Everyone was soaked and tired, but we had all had a good time, except for Michael and Saverna, and to me, it was a rather fun climb, much more technically challenging than most, though actually very similar to what clare and kim and I had done climbing gunung tahan, except that we had huge packs and it was for a much longer trek. It was Saverna's first trek and she struggled quite a lot especially on the downhill, and poor Michael wanted to help he said, but there wasn't anything you can really do. A couple of times Saverna just sat down and said she couldn't go any further. I think it was good for them (and their relationship) that they were going to a fancy beach resort on pulau perhentians for the 2nd week of their vacation.

That night we were all tucked inside our mosquito net, mine which they laugh at b/c it's definitely the ultralight small backpacker version so that I look more like a trapped animal in a cage too small, I was reading when I looked up and there crawling across my net in front of my face was a centipede (the poisonous type) about 8 inches long. I tried to flick it off and it just retreated under my camping mat. I showed everyone (michael, saverna, and the belgians were sharing the shelter with me), and there was a lot of screaming and freaking out. Being to good hero boyfriend, Michael grabbed a sandal and after 3 really hard whacks, the thing still wasn't dead, though some of its guts had splashed around. Finally the 4th one did the trick. Had quite a run in with bugs on this trip. Hannah got bit all over by some sort of fly and one morning when she woke up, her legs were full of huge bumps so that it looked like she had a bad case of the chicken pox. It was of course bee season by the rivers and both david and I got stung a couple times. And then I also got bit by something that made my calf feel like it had a huge knot and turn really red. Never figured out what it was, but it went away after a couple days.

The last day was the easy 8km back to the boat. We had hoped we'd make it back in time to see the caves again, but breakfast was of course late and then when we got to the river, our tour boat was the only one not there, and we had to wait for over an hour by the bee infested riverbed, which also means that the last 10 minutes of our ride we got caught in a soaking downpour when we should have been having lunch at the lodge. haha, oh well, another thing to laugh at our company about.

Mulu was definitely great though. Great rainforest and just impressive caves. So huge! And the other nice thing is it was set up very similar to our national parks back home with good trails and good information signs along the way. I've learned a fair amount about caves before, but the signs were quite informative and I learned some cool new things. I've done lots of cave things and I think Mulu made it into my top 3 cave experiences b/c of its huge scale. The other two would be carlsbad caverns in new mexico with its beautiful cave systems. It's quite large as well, but is by far the prettiest cave system I've seen with all its sparkling formations and well formed stalactites and mites. And the other is the adventure caving weekend on the west slope of Colorado. Doing the crazy cave crawl with bro and seany in glenwood where are clothes were ripped to shreds and we were covered in mud and then the self exploration of the cave system in Eagle which always adds excitement if you're going deep into a cave with no guide.

Flew back to Miri that evening. Stayed a quirky little hostel. The manager woman put in a DVD from Jack Osbourne's Adrenaline Junkie show that was filmed in the rainforest of Bario in the Kelabit Highlands which is also accessed by plane from Miri. I had thought about going to bario, but decided it was time to move on out of borneo as I'd done lots of rainforest things and seen lots of tribal peoples. But anyways, the gist of the show was this group was going on a 6 day trek into the jungle and it's full of them complaining, crying, struggling, getting eaten by leaches, even passing out. The malay woman got quite the kick out of it and was laughing so much. I too thought it was funny b/c they seemed like such wusses and were such complainers and moaners. And since it's a british show it's full of swearing. It reminded me of clare and kim and my 7 day trek in the jungle, except that I think ours was harder, we had to carry all our food, and we didn't have jungle experts nor top of the line jungle gear. So it was extra amusing for me. Check out http://www.itv.com/entertainment/reality/jackosbourneadrenalinejunkie3/episode2/default.html
for a synopsis on it, which is quite funny and puts into perspective our gunung tahan trek.

Flew from Miri to KL the next day, and that's where I am now.