Gunung Mulu National Park

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Richard and I flew from KK to Mulu Park – this National Park is only accessible by plane or by a long and arduous journey involving buses, boats, leap frogs and God knows what else. I chose the easy route! The Park is very organized and set up for guests – we checked into HQ, where we signed up for guided hikes and caves for the next 3 days and then found the way to our dormitory. The first night we took a short walk outside the park, found some weird insects and saw a lovely sunset. Early bed and early dinner (still recovering from Mt. K, you know).

The next morning, Richard was having a difficult time breathing – he has severe asthma – so he was unable to join me until they could fly in (!) some new medicine for him. Luckily it worked and he was feeling much better later in the day.

I did a lot of caves, so I’ll just sum them up a bit. To get to the caves, you take a 15 minute longboat ride down the river. I really loved that part, so relaxing! I did the “Show” caves first. My first impression of the caves was – wow. Pretty big! Clearwater is the 7th longest passage in the world and all I could think was, “There’s more BIGGER than this?!” There were some really cool formations inside the caves, and there was a nice boardwalk inside and even artistic lighting. Clearwater is named because it still has a river running through it while many of the other caves are dry. Cave of the Winds is named because you can feel a draft at certain parts of the cave. Another cool aspect was the swiftlets living inside. These birds create nests in 2 ways – by moss/trees or by saliva. We also had them in El Nido, but I only knew the Filipino word – Balinsasayaw. The nests made from saliva are edible, and considered a delicacy. Many people risk their lives climbing in the caves to collect the nests in the appropriate season.


Racer Cave was adventure caving. This cave didn’t have set boardwalks, so you had to climb over rocks and pull yourself up and lower yourself with ropes. It was a dry cave, meaning it was mostly just dirt – I got absolutely filthy! Also got a nice war wound when my foot slipped and my calf dragged down a rock face…nice scratches. It was really interesting to be inside a cave like an explorer…but I was so dirty and itchy by the end I was ready to get out. Don’t understand how explorers do it for days on end! My companion, an Irishman even more filthy than me, and I exited the cave and went straight into the river to cool off and hopefully clean off a bit.


The finale caves – Deer and Lang Cave – are the main draw for Mulu Park. Deer Cave is featured on Planet Earth’s “Caves” episode. It has the largest chamber in the world. A jumbo jet could fly inside! Even after I’d done the other caves, I was still floored by the immensity of Deer Cave. I was also overwhelmed by the stench. Between 2-3 million bats live in that cave, and believe me, there was a LOT of guano! Ew. We even saw a few mountains of it – literally. An interesting feature of the cave is that when you look outside, the rock formation looks exactly like the profile of Abraham Lincoln! Gool ol’ Abe. We took a path up to the middle of the cave to the viewpoint, and found some little bats that had fallen from the sky. Somehow they’d made their way to the tallest places they could find, trying to get their way back up to the ceiling and to their mothers (impossible). It was kind of sad to see them clinging to the wood posts, and some dead on the floor. If they didn’t make it soon, snakes would get them in the night. There were also gross little Ear Wig bugs crawling all over them – they have a symbiotic relationship where the bugs clean off the bats. Yuck.


We exited the cave and prepared for the famous “Bat Exodus.” The first night it rained on us and the bats didn’t exit, so we went back the second night and this time we were lucky. The bats form a giant group in the cave entrance and then exit in groups of about 100,000, moving through the twilight sky in a snake-like pattern. They have to stay in groups for safety, as there are several predator falcons that want them for dinner. They must fly 100s of kilometers away before its safe to break from the group. They then proceed to eat 3-5 grams of mosquitoes. Do you realize how many bugs that is?! I know whom to thanks for the light number of mosquito bites I received! Here's a video of one of many "bat exodus.



It wasn’t all just caving at Mulu. Many times, the way to the cave included a walk through the rainforest. We were shown many interesting trees and plants, and I found lots of weird looking bugs. We did a canopy rainforest walk. The bridge itself was a swinging bridge about 40 feet up in the air. It was nice to see the forest from a different angle, but we didn’t see any primates. We had the option to do some serious hiking (2 days treks or more) but since we’d just recovered from KK, we decided not to do it. Next time!

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