Advertisement
Published: August 16th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Hey all cant really remember what i wrote in the last blog so this may not follow on. Been in Mulu national park for the last week. The only way to get to Mulu is by plane as it is completely surronded by jungle. Or you can trek and then get a boat but the boat will only leave when it has enough passengers to it is a bit unreliable!!
We are staying in Diangs hoemstay because the park accomodation is full. It is quite a nice place to stay because we are a bit away from the park hq and right by a gorgeous clear river that you can swim in. The river water is also used for washing in - via a bucket in the bathroom!! And to flush the toilet another bucket is needed!!
Went to see the caves - Deer and Lang cave first on sunday afternoon. Deer cave is the largest underground passage in the world. Lang cave was discovered by Mr Lang who was a porter for the team researching deer cave, he wondered off doing a bit of hunting when he shouldnt have been and found the other cave. After walking round
DSCF1510
Me being a proper tourist!! deer cave we sat outside to watch the bats leaving. There are around 2million bats living in the cave and when they leave they leave in massive groups which snake their way across the sky.
Sunday evening we asked if we could go with Diang and her family to the local church. They had just finished building a new house for the Pastor and so they were having a celebration to bless it. It was really nice, all the locals came and there was lots of singing and plenty of local food.
On monday we left the homestay and went to start the pinnacles trek. First we took the boat to clearwater and wind cave. These two caves are connected with a series of others and in total measure 150km long!! Outside clearwater cave is a natural pool which was gorgeous to swim in. Also went to the local village to look round. This tribe used to live in the jungle but were moved out when the park became a reservation. Understandably the older members of the village were not too pleased. Then we contiued for another 2 hours in the longboat, the river was sooo shallow in
Moon Milk Cave
Tight squeeze!! places that frequently we were required to get out and push the boat!! That was quite good fun but bloody tiring as we were pushing upstream. Once we had gone as far as the boat could take us we off loaded all our stuff and started the 8km walk to camp 5. Did the walk in 2 hours which the guide (Richard) said was really good. There are 9 people in our group - Rico, Maria, Hamish, Will, Sarah and Richard, Alex and Joel and I. OUr guide was Richard - his tribal name is Burong. There were also some Italians doing the same trip but not in our group - one of them constantly wore leopard print speedos!! So wrong!!
At camp 5 we had a dorm room just for our group. There was also another great natural pool but unfortunately just after we arrived it started to chuck it down. Most people do the Pinnacles and then stay at camp 5 another night but we couldnt get accom so we had to do all there and back to the park in one day. For that reason we set out in the dark at 5am. Got up for b'fast
at 4am.
Climbing up the rocks in the dark was great fun and when the sun came up at 5.45am the view was amazing. We could see the mountains sticking out from the clouds.
It was a hard climb to the top but really worth it the view of the pinnacles was incredible. I will put pictures on as soon as i get a chance. We got to stay up there for about an hour and eat our lunch up there or b'fast as it was only 9am!! The climb doen was not so much fun, wnet most of the way backwards as it was so steep and slippery and hot!! Am covered in bruises but it was well worth it. After a quick swim and a bit of recovery time we headed back for the 8km walk and 2hour boat ride back to park hq. Fortunately the rain the night before had meant that the river was higher so we didnt have to push as we were all too tired.
The next day i went adventure caving with Hamish and Will. It was so much fun, we went to racer cave, so called bacause of the racer snakes
View from the homestay
This was the view from our homestay where we could swim and bath and wash our clothes!! that live there. Although we looked for them but didnt find any. However, did see loads of Huntsman spiders as big as my hand!! I was freaking out about that big time as it was completely pitch black so they could have climbed on me at anytime!! That night so tired that caving had finished me off!
The next day we met up with Richard in the afternoon - he had become our full time guide!! He said we were the best group he had had for a long time. We walked to a natural hot spring, which was so hot but so smelly!! Ended up having a mud fight which was great fun but the smell on the way home was not!! We got some veg from diang and Richard made us spicy fish balls and rice and then we had a bbq. It was really nice just to cook our own food and chill out.
Finally left Mulu on sat. Our flight was delayed due to the rain, and apparently they cant fly after 5 because of the bats leaving the cave!! Flew back to Miri to stay back in the Highlanders backpackers run by the
slightly made Johann!! Tomorrow we Fly to Bario to do a five day trek in the Kelabit Highlands.
Hopefully will get some pics on here soon. Loved Mulu so much, it was so peaceful but a week is definitely long enough there as there is not much that you can do without a guide.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.081s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 12; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0385s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mumsy
non-member comment
Batman!
Wonderful Lauren- wish I was there! We saw batcaves too, but prob not as authentic as yours! Heath Ledger was great tho- such a shame. Keep writing its very interesting - like Jaksy's was at the start - so don't trail off after Borneo please! love lots xxx