We were woken up by our alarm at just past seven, but we had managed to get close to 10 hours sleep! I think my singing with headphones on last night did the trick to get everyone settled quickly - I think that will have to be a recurring feature of the family room style accommodations.
We got our breakfast and picked up our boxed lunch that we'd ordered the night before. For the morning program, we were on the Clearwater and Wind Cave program. We met our guide, Harvey, at the park office with the other five that were part of our group. Harvey was no Jasper, but he was serviceable.
First up was a cruise in a longboat up the river to a traditional village market. The river cruise was right up my alley - in a low, long boat, weaving back and forth on the river to avoid unseen obstacles.
The sides of the river were covered in dense jungle, with the occasional high canopy tree sticking out of the forest top and rising another several hundred feet. This was the jungle!!!
The stop at the village market was pretty fun - the kids all got a chance at shooting blow darts at a target. Some found the technique intuitive.... Some did not.
The village was populated by a formerly nomadic people (now firmly rooted in modern long houses). I can't imagine moving from place to place in the jungle, never having a permanent home.... Though I guess we've been pretty nomadic these past couple of months!
We stopped at a jetty and got out. The plan was to visit two caves, have lunch and a swim then head back down the river. We went first to the Wind cave. These caves today were part of the Clearwater Cave System - a series of caves and chambers that stretches over an unbelievable 200 km long underground !!
There are actually a lot of "tour" options at Mulu that are very adventurous - a 5 day trek to climb up Mt Mulu, other multi day treks as well as advanced caving adventures where you have to squeeze through small shafts up to 15 meters in length - maybe that last one would not be good for our group.
The Wind cave was pretty cool - I'm not saying I'm getting "caved out" but for me the fun in these experiences is the group we're in, the boat ride up the river, and the walks.
The Wind cave was called that because there are narrow spaces separating large chambers that forces the air through very quickly, though on our visit, there was little wind to cool us off. The temperature has been pretty good, and with all the shade from the canopy, the only real thing making people sweat I think is the high levels of humidity.
We walked along this cool boardwalk that hugged the cliff side on the way over to our next cave....
Clearwater cave was also very impressive.
We climbed about 200 steps up to the entrance, then dove down flights of stairs to get to the base of the entrance. I can't believe the level of sophistication of the walkways, rope ways, concrete paths, bridges and stairs in these caves. It must have taken months and months to build out each cave - and that's probably not taking into account getting materials, power, scaffolding and tools through the jungle and into these caves - all with minimal impact to the environment of the caves and surrounds.
Clearwater cave had a really cool diagram showing how the water eroded the caves millions of years ago to make the shapes they are now. We became experts at scalloping, stalagmites, stalactites and keyhole erosion.... Take that!!
We ascended a new walkway that they finished building last year in Clearwater - when we were near the top, we could see part of the opening in the distance where there were little ant-sized humans coming down the stairs. These caves were just humongous.
We ate our little packed lunches after climbing down to the jetty picnic area. Hmmm.... Nasi Goreng (fried rice). After, the 5 kids went swimming (Alex being the oldest of the five) - Kim, Beth and I could not picture putting on sweaty clothes again after swimming, and the water did not seem exactly, well, clear.
The kids did their Versly-Tyndall cheer, "1, 2, 3, let's Mulu!"
If you look carefully at Mulu, you can see all kinds of strange characters.... This little guy was on the railing by our table at lunch:
We got back just after 2pm, and though the girls had talked about doing a hike over to a waterfall, that almost predictably turned into the girls napping and Alex and I getting some beers and Roti Canai snacks and working on blog entries. The kids were up to no good - Alex and I weren't too sure WHERE they were up to no good, so that was a nice way to spend the afternoon. Turns out, they'd kicked Kim out of her room and put her in Beth's room.
It started raining again with quite a bit of lightening in the late afternoon, but we didn't have any plans until the anticipated "night walk". I will give Beth credit - she hadn't expressed too much anxiety over doing the night walk (essentially a guided "bug walk" in the jungle at night) - maybe she had turned a new leaf after braving the Gibbon Experience for all of two nights :-).
After dinner we met our guide Esther, a local from Mulu who believe it or not had been an auditor in the nearby city of Miri until she got this opportunity at Mulu. She loved the jungle and nature, and it showed. The sky was still flaring with the occasional lightning strike, but the rain and pretty much stopped, so we started walking cautiously over to the Botany Loop of the park.
The main areas of interest on the night walk are large insects, spiders, snakes, birds and frogs. We saw a lot of cool stuff.
The kids were pretty good, though they got pretty squeamish when we started seeing a lot of fairly big stuff - pretty big Huntsmen spiders (turns out those were the ones in Laos), white and black spotted geckos, a ton of weird, wacky and really big stick bugs (stick bugs I guess are a class of bugs that mainly hangs around and eats leafy plants), a vine snake, large millipedes, cool little sleeper birds, a gigantic (10" long) grasshopper and lots of other little oddities. We all quite enjoyed the night walk, though you tended to start feeling imaginary things landing on your legs and arms as the walk progressed.
We were all pretty bushed by the time we got back. We showered off the layer of sweat from the day, and I serenaded my three girls to sleep with a combination of Muse, Nirvana and Pink Floyd. I may even start entertaining requests.....
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