The flight into Gunung Mulu National Park was a short one. I was hoping to avoid flying but the alternative, a bus and 2 longboats, was going to be pretty expensive by myself. Some time ago they used to have a public longboat go direct to the national park from one of the towns along the river. They cancelled it for some reason (I reckon it was malaysian Airlines trying to make more money) so now you have to charter it. The odds were that I`d end up chartering it by myself and that would cost more than the cost of a return flight.

The view from the flight was fairly interesting. Chocolate brown rivers and tributaries cutting through seemingly endless rainforest. Then in middle of it all you see huge oil palm plantations. Row after row of palm trees, the epitome of neatness and tidiness, amidst the chaos of the jungle. It looked totally out of place and was a little depressing.

The park itself is pretty impressive, not just for the rainforest and caves which it is reknowned for, but also for the facilities there. The accomodation and eating areas are more like a resort than something you`d normally find in a national park (there`s actually a resort just down the road but why you`d bother is beyond me). I guess thats why you end up paying a bit more for everything. but compared to Mount Kinabalu it was cheap.

the best of the caves was Deer cave. It has the world`s largest cave entrance. They give you a whole load of useless facts about what you could fit into the cave entrance like how many houston astrodomes could fit in. I can`t remember any of them but they were impressive. At a guess the height of the roof was somewhere between 100 and 200 metres. As you walked in it felt as if you were on another planet. the reddish colour of the mounds of guano (bird and bat shit which absolutely stank) along with the shape of the rocks gave it a Mars-like feel. There was a constant buzzing sound from the millions of bats which hang off the roof. As the sun set we stood outside the cave entrance and watched as the bats exit for their nightly feed on insects (they collectively eat around 1 tonne a night). At first they form a tornado like spiral as they leave the cave and then they form a long line which snakes its way across the sky above. their movements are remarkably similar to large schools of fish. moving together to protect themselves against attack from predators.

The highlight of my time there, other than the skinny dip in the crystal clear water outside the front of clearwater cave, was the trip to the Pinnacles. I teamed up with greg and Nick, who I had met in Sulawesi, John, a really nice Malaysian guy that Greg and Nick had made friends with along the way, and Paul, a lanky Englishman who had just finished some volunteer work with orangutans in kalimantan. It was a good group and we had a fun couple of days hiking and cruising on the river. We reached the Pinnacles after a nice climb along a slippery and steep trail. The Pinnacles, a group of razor sharp limestone peaks situated on the side of Mount Api (Fire mountain) that resemble a petrified forest, were interesting but not mindblowing like the summit of Kinabalu. the trail was a lot more interesting though, not so much for wildlife (we only saw a couple of shrews that were after free handouts) but for the dificult terrain.  Moss covered jagged limestone rocks most of the way. If you read the post trip reports in the guestbook and listened to the guide you`d think that it was near impossible and the hardest trek you`re ever likely to do. We all had images of a climb up vertical ladders on a sheer cliff face for the last section but it really wasn`t that hard. Even John made it up after threatening to quit after the first kilometre mark.

The trip was memorable for three other reasons. the first was the guide, who, like Kinabalu, really wasn`t needed. We were lucky though because ours was somewhat gifted. half way up he stopped us, sniffed around for a while and said that he could smell snakes nearby. later he said he smelt monkeys. Unsurprisingly we didn`t see any of either. The second reason was the german biologist who staying at the campsite. he had been there for a couple of months. Every night he would walk up to the pinnacles looking for frogs and snakes. He said on average he would find maybe one snake a night usually one every second night. We told him that he should hire our guide because of his ability to smell them but apparently its not possible to smell them. One night he found a male pit viper near the camp and decided to bag it and move it further away the next night. he took it out so we could take photos. Its colour was almost an incredibly bright, almost flouro, green. The third memorable thing was the constant battle between Paul and Greg during their nightly games of chess and batgammon. Both were psychology students and it was interesting watching them size each other up and constantly talking each other down. it was the most trashtalk I`ve ever heard over a game of chess.