The Kirks

From Kuching we had to take several flights in smaller and smaller planes to get to Gunung Mulu National Park. It was SO HOT, but did we get time to relax? Never! We had a very brief swim (and I mean brief) and then we were off. The start wasn’t so good, instead of going to the lovely buffet for lunch we went to a tiny, dirty cafe crawling with insects and ate greasy food. We were so hungry we had an ice-cream after at the hotel before heading off to the first caves, the Deer Cave and the Lang Cave. It was a long walk and we saw hundreds of insects using the wooden handrail as a sort of highway, including extremely hairy caterpillars and several bright orange millipedes (one of which raised its head and looked into the lens as Dad took a picture!).

When we got there we had a 10 minute rest (I wanted to get going but our guide had a very strict schedule). Then we set off for the youngest of the caves, named after the guide who found it, the Lang Cave. It isn’t really a very big cave, more wide than tall, and has strange, jelly like formations. Hannah found a birds nest!

Then the Deer Cave, the oldest, and named because hundreds of years ago a herd of deers lived there. Now the only wildlife is 4 million bats and a few birds. It is huge, with an enormous skylight. Looking back at the huge hole that is the entrance, you can clearly see a face that the locals say is Abraham Lincoln (but we think is Elvis Presley).
Of course, because of all the bats, what comes out has to go somwhere, and that somewhere is on the cave floor. In short, there are dunes of bat poo everywhere, which smells of well, bat poo. We also saw some bats hanging on a post eating orange earwigs. They screeched when light went in their faces. Hannah is now spending her spare time doing impersonations of the little bat that was crawling along the post at the time; ”boom boom aeee.”

More posts on the two other caves (Wind and Clearwater) later.

Izzy