Mulu - Rainforest turf

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We arrived in Mulu National Park by plane, it was amazing flying over and seeing nothing but a continuous tree line for miles, welcome to the jungle. We were staying in the National Park itself which was lovely. That night we took a bit of a wander to see one of the local caves (one had the largest cave entrance in the world!) Part of the alure to this place is the bats that live in the naturally formed holes in the ceiling and at around 6pm the bat hour begins as they leave their home in search of food. They consume 30 tonnes of mosquitos per night in the area. They leave in their millions but as the weather was a bit pooh there were only a few thousand when we were there but still pretty impressive.

The next day we did some more cave tours, which were even more stunning and then onto our 9km trek into the jungle to our accomodation. Just as we arrive there it started raining and we commented " well thats quite lucky at least we got there dry", the thing is it did not stop raining all that evening, all that night and all the next day. The walk we had planned up a mountain to see the limestone pinnacles had to be called off for safety reasons (our guide had been doing the walk for 9 years and this was the first time it happend to him!). The pain of it was we were stuck, stuck looking at the mountain allllllll day, very little to do but wait until it got dark until we could go to bed. We did do a jungle trek in the rain to pass some time and the high point of that was when jon had to extract a leech from jackys crotch area..... not what either of us expected from our honeymoon. Later that evening another group arrived, the rain stopped and they got to do the walk (our walk, not that we were bitter) the next day in the lovely sun shine, WHO NAMED THIS THE BLOODY RAINFOREST ANYWAY!

Due to a problem with the boat man we barely made our plane out of there, ahhhhhh. On a lighter note we are back in civilisation now and waiting to climb mount Kinabalu tomorrow (the tallest mountain in Sabah), so fingers crossed for us guys and we'll let you know how it goes.

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Photos

Forget Indiana Jones ...
The trek to our lodge, rough paths and rope bridges !

Millions of leeches
Leeches for me, millions of leeches, leeches for free !

The bat cave
But where is Robin ???

When insect bites go wrong
The thing about jungles is they have insects. The thing about insects is they like Jacky. The thing about Jacky is she doesn't like insects ! This picture I think goes someway to illustrating that, not even sure what bit her this time.

Comments

[Susie]

bleurgh!
We would have believed you about the bites - we didn't need to see evidence!

[Pitt the Elder]

rope bridge
Is that a penknife in your hand just creaping into shot as you take the ropebridge photo jon..?

[Alvin]

Just got back from Mulu. We didn't manage to climb the pinnacles...we were 70% there when it started to rain quite heavily. We had to go back to the Camp. Actually, your guide can bring you to the headhunters' trail opposite Camp 5. That's what we did. You'll find some wildlife...a lot of unique plants........and more leeches. Yea...i seriously mean MORE leeches.

[Claire]

eeugh!
have you resisted the urge to pop that? Hello btw : )