This morning we’re heading off to Mulu NP in the north of Sarawak. It’s somewhere I could have visited on the way down the state from Miri if I had of had more time, but more than that, all the people I have met on my travels so far who have been to Mulu say it’s such a lovely park and so worth visiting that I thought it would be great to see it with Keith. So after a few text messages backwards and forwards last week, Keith and I decided that after meeting in Kuching we’d fly up to Mulu for a few days and then fly back down to Kuching after.
This morning we’re flying on a ATR 72-500 which seats 68 passengers, the flight is going from Kuching to Mulu to Miri to Kota Kinabalu and on this flight there was just 17 of us! The flight is operated by MAS Wings which apparently is part of Malaysian Airways, but I’m wondering, with those kind of passengers loads and the prices of the flights, how on earth are they making any money?? Anyway, moving on!
The flight from Kuching to Mulu is to take 1 and a half hours, we get a little snack on board and it’s a bit of a chance to catch up on some reading of where we’re going. As we get closer and closer you can just see the difference in vegetation and as we descend nearer to Mulu the rainforest is just beautiful, really green and luscious and immense, it seems to go on forever and ever. We had started our descent, in fact we had more than started our descent when the captain came on the PA to say that due to weather conditions in Mulu we would be circling for a while until it cleared! From where we were sitting the weather looked just fine and me being me, with the inside info through flying that I have, started to wonder what he was talking about and of course begin to wonder if we were going to crash!! It didn’t help that he signed off his PA with ‘Don’t worry, everything’s under control!’ Now I know sometimes our (Monarch’s) flight deck word some PAs inappropriately (sorry Steve, nothing personal of course!) but really this PA could have been worded a little better than it was!!
Needless to say, though, we finally landed into Mulu airport without any problems and to be fair to the Captain we did actually land in rain! After being offered umbrellas as we disembarked (better service than the big M (that’s Monarch not MacDonalds!)) we found ourselves in the smallest airport I think I’ve ever been in (and that’s saying something) and were personally handed our bags. It was a RM5 journey per person to the park HQ where we promptly dropped our bags and headed off on the first tour to Deer and Langs caves, a swift 3.4km away.
Deer cave gets its name after the deer that used to go there to feed off of the salt from the bat and swiftlet droppings, needless to say they no longer go there, they probably don’t have the small change handy for the guiding and park entrance fees! :-)
Deer cave is not only the largest show cave at Mulu it is also the largest cave passage in the world, over 2km in length and 174m in height, apparently big enough to park eight 747 jets end to end!
Langs cave gets its name from the guy who discovered it and has an amazing and impressive display of stalactites, stalagmites, helictites, shawls and rimstone pools.
In both of these caves and indeed in all of the caves in Mulu there is a massive population of bats and swiflets. There are around 3 million bats just in Deer cave alone and while we were visiting it our guide found 3 little baby bats that had become separated from their mothers and so were not going to survive more than another couple of days he thought. Bats are mammals and are the only mammals that can fly, unless of course you include us on our way to Mulu! And like all mammals they care for their young for some time, feeding and tending to them till they can fend for themselves. While the mothers are out hunting for food they deposit their young in ‘nurseries’ which are tended by other young females who don’t have babies. Sometimes adventurous babies stray a little from the ‘nursery’ and if they’re not rounded back up by the babysitters they can become lost like the ones our guide found and eventually die through lack of care. There’s something about bats that I find super cute, I did almost toy with the possibility of taking them home and keeping them in my loft, I’m sure customs wouldn’t notice (!) but of course this is an exact example of ‘survival of the fittest’ so instead I let nature take its course.
After visiting the caves a highlight, if the bats deliver the goods, is their mass exodus from the cave in the early evening as they leave to go hunting for food. The only problem is that apparently they aren’t major fans of rain! They’ve chosen an interesting location to set up home then as in the rainforest it rains for an amazing amount of time; over 100mm for between 9 and 12 months of each year, now that’s a lot of rain!
Unfortunately for us last night’s bat exodus was the best that has been seen in a long time and as a result it seems their bellies are full of insects and they have no need for feeding tonight. We hung around for an hour or so but unfortunately no joy!
One little family that got too tired waiting for the bats!
We’ve got another two nights here though so hopefully we might see some impressive action.
In the evening we just hung out at the park cafe with all the other people who are staying in the park. It’s a great relaxing little area, right in the middle of the park so we can enjoy all the exotic sights and sounds of the forest.
More wildlife of the forest
