We land at Mulu, our accommodation is at the park hq in a rather plush bungalow,
on arrival we book all our activities for the next couple of days which involves two guided walks to caves and a tree top canopy walk.
Our first walk is through the rain forest (we know it’s rain forest because it hasn’t stopped raining since we arrived here)
to deer cave which was the cave used on the “Planet Earth” series of David Attenborough’s documentaries to film the thousands of bats streaming out at dusk, our guide accompanied the crew during their month long stay filming the spectacle.
The interior of the cave is vast with incredible rock formations.
The part open to the public is only 1 km long out of 170km which has been charted.
This strange sight is said to resemble Abraham Lincoln although it looks more like Bruce Forsyth to me.
On our way back to the park hq we find that as it’s been raining so much part of the pathway is flooded.
Day 2 at Mulu and it’s finally stopped raining, the river is very high still and some of the trekking paths are closed so we take a short boat ride upstream
via a local village which has also seen some flooding
our guide for this mornings trip to the cave of winds and clearwater cave tells us that this is very unusual as it is now supposed to be the dry season.
The cave of winds is quite a trek up from the river
and has some very unusual limestone rock formations.
The next cave is Clearwater which again is another trek up from the river.
And is home to the rare one leaf plant which as the name describes has just one leaf and lives only here on the limestone cliffs of Mulu.
The cave is just as you imagine a cave in a rain forest in Borneo would look.
We spot some butterflies which have a wingspan of about 6 inches.
Returning to park hq and our bungalow we take refuge during the heat of the day.
Late afternoon we head back to deer cave to see the spectacular bat exodus, we are not disappointed unlike yesterday when the rainfall meant that the bats stayed in the cave.
There are an estimated three million bats living in this single cave and this show went on for well over an hour, bats continually streaming out of the cave it was amazing.
Day 3 at Mulu and our first excursion is to the tree canopy walk, a 500m walkway suspended 30m up in the treetops. We arrive at the tower and I walk out about 20m and my vertigo kicks in and I decide to call it quits there and then, Jo continues on and I wait back down on terra firma. Jo took some photos so here they are.
Next up is a trip upwards again this time up an observation tower 45m up in the tree tops,
this one’s easy as it’s solid ground all the way and there is no need to look down – unless you want to of course. By now times getting on and the temperature is soaring, there are no animals or birds around except a venomous dog toothed cat snake (yes that really is what it’s called) glaring at us from a ledge on the inside of the tower.
Back down on the ground and we come across a large centipede
And we’re attacked by sticky the stick insect which fell off the gate as we opened it.
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