Mulu

After a day in Miri organising things (well, Joanne our personal assistant organising things for us - us lazing on the couch) we were off on our trip to the UNESCO World Heritage listed Gunung Mulu National Park. After only a 30 minute flight from Miri, we were greeted by our guide "Larry" at the Mulu airport (strip of tarmac in the jungle). Whilst the rest of the plane load were whisked away in minivans to the fancy pants Royal Mulu Resort, we walked down the road a little and then disappeared into the jungle for our "airport transfer" - a long boat ride to the start of our hike to The Pinnacles.


Larry our guide was a local guy from Limbang who used to work at the National Park but now works for himself as a freelance guide, and was introduced to us through Joanne. The Park also provides guides for a fee, however at similar rates but half the English skills, personality and sincerity. The Park only requires that tourists pay their park fees and have some sort of guide and freelance guides charge a flat rate - so if you can make a small group it just gets cheaper!

Anyway, we met up with the rest of our group (1 Polish, 1 German and 2 English - again organised by Joanne) along the way and were dropped at the trekking point to Camp 5. An easy 8 km walk through the jungle in the rain (including regular "leech check" stops) and we were at Camp 5 before dark. The other great thing about freelance guides - they do all the cooking!

Camp 5 - an open air shelter where you are provided with a mattress and some floor space and a view of the Pinnacles view point (faint blob up in the clouds -directly above the shelter) - our challenge for the next day.



After a great meal consisting of black peppered chicken and local greenery and mushroom fried in garlic and chilli with rice it was straight to bed (about 9) to get as much sleep in as possible before our 5am wake up call (if you could block out the pouring rain on the tin roof, the rushing river and the generator blasting away).

Our 5am wake up call was eased by the smell of our breakfast wafting throught the shelter (pancakes, toast and coffee)- but after that it was straight out into the rain to get on with the climb. The Pinnacles walk itself it only 2.4km, but when you combine that with a elevation of 1.2km, rain, dim lighting, leeches, spiders and mozzies - it becomes a stack load tougher!! It's up hill all the way with the last 400m or so near vertical and climbed using a series of fixed ladders and ropes (and some handy rock climbing skills).



Soaking wet we reached the viewing point after about 3 hours - just in time for the clouds to clear, giving us a glarious view of our prize.



The Pinnacles themselves are are series of sharp limestone spikes and are an extremely rare type of formation. They were pretty cool- but I think most of the fun was getting there!

After an hour of snapping photos and digesting soggy sandwiches the clouds were back signalling it was time to get down.

After 4 hours of bone jarring decent (I suggested Larry install a flying fox) and lots of falls (none by me for once!) we were greeted by a swarm of sweat bees back at the shelter. I was the lucky one that got stung a few times and my shreek alerted the rest of the gang to run and jump in the river (fully clothed!) to rid ourselves of the "odour" the bees were after!!

A swim, another great meal cooked by Larry and a beer later, we were all tucked up again slathered in insect repellant.

The next morning we awoke feeling like we had been run over by a truck! However our bodies loosened a little as we retraced the 8 ks back to the drop off point and were taken by long boat to stay in the comfort of the hostel back at Park HQ. We spent a further two days in Mulu exploring the extensive cave system and taking the very tame boardwalks about the park, including a canopy walk which takes you about 20 metres up into the jungle canopy on a series of rope bridges.

Geckos were everywhere about the park, on the roof of most rooms and often in the shower!

Not sure if this was the edible kind, but wasn't game to find out!

Part of the Canopy walk - rope bridges that go from platform to platform built on massive trees.

The Garden of Eden at one end of the Deer Cave system.

Just some of the 2-3 million bats that emerge from Deer Cave each evening, spiralling in huge swarms to avoid being picked off by waiting birds of prey.

Today we flew back to Miri (after sadly declining an all expenses paid stay in Mulu Resort for one more night because our flight was over booked) ready for our flight to Bario tomorrow. (We couldn't really have stayed there anyway as there is much anguish over the building of the resort - the land was practically stolen from the local Berawan people and there are plans for the government to take even more land for a golf course, with little compensation and strong punishment for those who protest.)

Joanne has come through again and organised us another guide and we plan to walk from Bario to Ba Kelalan through the jungle, visiting longhouses and whatever communities and other things we come across along the way. We should be back in the civilisation of Brunei in about a week XX.