Another day out of National Geographic (Jan. 6/09 - Gunung Mulu National Park, Borneo, Malaysia)

Our little Dash-8 plane was skimming the rainforest treetops and touching down in Gunung Mulu National Park even before 10am this morning. Our bags were unloaded amongst boxes of food headed for the camp, as everything here has to be flown in from Miri or transported by boat up the river. At the park headquarters, we got the lowdown on which hikes, walks, and other activities would fit into our three day saty. We were pointed in the direction of our room, nestled amongst the rainforest in a building that also has a cafe, food and gift shop, and a museum-like discovery center that explains everything you wanted to know about the park's geology, vegetation, etc.

The Lonely Planet describes Mulu as "the single most impressive destination in all of Borneo." That's a tall order to live up to, but we're pretty sure it's deserving. The park's highlight is its caves - dissolved and eroded out of limestone, they comprise the largest, longest, and most impressive caves on the planet. The peaks above all the caves can be climbed as another highlight, and one area called The Pinnacles comprises a jumble of razor sharp white limestone spears that jut out some 50m above the rainforest. The forst itself is definitely another highlight, as the park is entirely untouched and contains some of the most ecologically rich plant and animal life on earth. Oh yeah, and there are also postcard perfect waterfalls to hike to, crystal clear streams to swim in, and even a treetop path that gets you up into the rainforest canopy. Sounds like paradise to me - and here we are!

First up is Lang's Cave. It's actually the smallest of Mulu's four "show caves" (awesome and easily accessible, that is), but it contains some fascinating limestone formations that have formed over thousands of years of water droplets slowly dripping from the ceiling, running down the walls, and flowing along the floor. Lights have been placed in the cave to highlight the natural beauty of the formations, and some of them were so artistically bizarre that it was hard to even imagine how they formed. We walked for an hour through the rainforest to get to the caves, but along the way we were accompanied by all kinds of colourful butterflies, huge beetles, camoflauged lizards, oversized vegetation, and even a giant stick bug! We had seen stick bugs before, but this one must've been almost a foot long!

After we exited Lang's Cave, we entered Deer Cave, whose mouth is just a short walk away. Deer Cave has the largest cave passage int he world - 174m in height and over 2km in length. Approaching it, we were speechless - the cave's mouth was so enormous that you could barely make out the top! 174m is tall enough to build a 50 storey building inside. Yeah - holy crap! It felt as spacious as walking into BC Place... just awesome. Niah Caves yesterday were amazing, but they were tiny compared to this! Water showerd down in veil-like streams from multiple fissures in the ceiling, which made for a beautiful scene as we walked further inside and looked out toward the daylight streaming in. A river flows through the cave, logically, as that is what formed it in the first place, though it is just a trickle now. The trail carried on into the dark depths of the cave, where the echoing sound of the river was nearly deafening. Daylight became visible at the far end, where the river flows in from a patch of pristine jungle called The Garden of Eden before returning to another cave a little farther up. Birds and bats could be seen flitting around inside the cave, but the ceilings were so high that you really couldn't see them very well. Yet.

A couple years ago, a magnificent series of documentaries called Planet Earth were produced, each of which featured unique and remarkable natural wonders around the world. We have only seen a few of them, but one that was particularly memorable was about a bizarre mass exodus of millions of bats from a remote cave in the jungles of Borneo. Well guess what - it was Deer Cave. We left the cave behind and took a seat at a viewing area in front of the cave entrance. Every day, the 2.5 to 3 million bats that are estimated to inhabit Deer Cave fly out en masse to feed on jungle insects at dusk before returning to the cave at dawn. As if on cue, at exactly 6:00pm as we gazed at the cave intently, a black swarm of nearly indistinguishable black dots emerged from the cave in a long stream, warping and bending into spirals and arcs like a giant black snake in the sky. It was an amazing sight - literally millions of bats performing precise acrobatics with the intent of confusing predatorial birds as they made a run for the forest. At first, the streams came in "short" lengths, as if a gate was closing at the cave mouth to hold the rest back - but eventually the streams became longer, and finally one giant cloud of bats emerged, taking several minutes to pass overhead. More shorter streams followed, sometimes several at once, and then isolated blobs of bats began to appear higher in the sky and coming from behind the hills in front of us - these would be bats emerging from other caves nearby. One stream broke into two lines that spun into a near perfect double helix, and another turned in a cylindrical tube over and over again in place, possibly unable to decide who was in front! We counted at least 54 individual streams emerging from Deer Cave alone, each comprising thousands of bats. They were still going strong after 30 minutes, and we eventually left them to their aerial circus so we could get back to camp before dark. Between the sheer natural beauty and imensity of the caves and the incredible show displayed by the millions of bats, today felt like one of those days where you have found a special corner of the world that is almost too precious to share. Almost.