Caves in Gunu Mulu National Park, Borneo Jungle

Friday May 24 2013 9 pm 

My alternate title for this blog was "Fighting Phobias".  I'm quite proud myself for overcoming a couple of my major phobias in the last few days!  Mainly heights and small dark spaces!  

Getting to this place was a long journey.  It took four flights with long layovers before we finally arrived.  Fortunately when we did finally get here, we could see it was well worth the escapade.  Entering Gunu Mulu National Park is like stepping into another world Louisiananter into complete rain forest.  The power of nature here is quite enveloping.  

The bridge into Gunu Mulu National Park

We arrived yesterday evening too late to go out on any tours and too tiered to do much trekking on our own.  We tried to go on a walk and ended up about a hundred meters out in a total downpour.  It was lovely but we were completely soaked.  There is a decent cafe where we passed most of the evening.  We turned in early totally exhausted from our journey.  I think we fell asleep shortly after 6pm!  

We had two cave tours with a guide booked for today.  Shortly after breakfast though I fell violently ill and vomited for half an hour.  So we rescheduled the morning tour for tomorrow and I slept off whatever they was with N at my side caring for me.  I was so grateful to have him!  And very happy that they rescheduled our trek hassle free!  

In the afternoons I was feeling mostly fine again.  

It is a 3 km walk through the rainforest on boardwalks, although it took us about an hour because we all wanted to stop about a million times for photos.  There is so much cool stuff to see:  plants and bugs.  It took us about an hour because we all wanted to stop and look at everything!  (Inside joke: I couldn't help wishing Enviro-Gord was there with us).  I took so many photos but I really don't think any photo could translate the depth or interest of the rainforest.  N and I both felt that they've done a very good job of making the park feeling natural and accessible to visitors.  

We went to Lang Cave and Deer Cave.  The caves far exceeded my expectations.  They are enormous! The magnitude of them really cannot be captured in a photo because of the dark.  Deer Cave is the largest public cave in the world.  And there is only one other known larger cave in the world.  Again the park has done an excellent job if these!  They at lit inside but just enough so that you can see the really cool stalactite and stalagmite formations and the boardwalk.  It is a huge!  And the formations and just unbelievable!  I am not a huge fan of small, dark, damp places but I really enjoyed the tour of these caves.  

In the evening you wait outside to see the "bat exodus"!  Every evening, that is not raining, 2-3 million bats leave Deer Cave in a thin spiralling cork screw formation to go out and hunt bugs for their late night dinner.  There at almost no mosquitos in the area.  We haven't even worn bug spray even though it is hot and humid.  It's really perfect mosquito climate but there are very few.  It's great!  For about a half and hour the bats spin and wind our of the cave in a long stream.  It initially looks more like bugs than bats.  It's quite cool though!

We met a Dutch couple from our tour and had dinner with them and then played some cards.  It was a great day of exploring despite its rocky start.  

Saturday May 25 2013 

We have crossed the half way point in our trip, as we are scheduled to be back in Edmonton June 24.  

We got up a bit earlier this morning to pack up and then go up a bird watch tower.  It's about a fifteen minute walk and then a lot f stairs but to the tops of the trees.  I wish we'd had time for the canopy walk, which I think at some point gives you a view over the trees.  This one is designed for bird watchers so you can just see over the tree tops but mostly just into trees all around you, not over them.  

Next we joined a tour for two more caves.  You take a boat down the river to get to these caves.  Clear Water Cave is the longest cave in Asia, eighth in the world, at 190 km and still being explored.  It has a river running through it with, you guessed it, clear water!  We also went to Wind Cave.  These caves were darker, damper and the passages were smaller.  These caves had a lot more stairs in them.  I have officially worked off my winter weight! They were cool but I enjoyed the ones yesterday more.  

The major perk to this trek was that we got to go swimming in the river at the rest point outside the caves.  The water was chilly but very refreshing after the long hike.  It started raining while we were in the river.  It's a bit surreal to be swimming in a Malaysian Rainforest River in the rain!

We're flying to Kuching now for a few days.  The plan is to do some day tours into the jungle to see the orang utans.