A good night sleep and I was feeling so much better than last night. An early morning walk through the rainforest was a great way to start the day.
PThe Botany walk was fascinating. This Belian (ironwood) tree is believed to have been a thousand years old when it died and as it is not susceptible to termites, it is only decaying slowly as a result of the slightly acidic rainwater, and as a result it looks like limestone.
Hamish had hoped to go on the advanced caving expedition, having passed the intermediate stage yesterday, but unfortunately the heavy rain last night led to the tour being cancelled. So he joined me on the normal tour of the same caves.
First, a short boat ride down the Melanau river to a Penan village market.
Having listened to the story of Bruno Manser - a Swiss man who got it into his head to go to the other side of the world and live with a people he knew almost nothing about, and then led their fight against the destruction of their homelands by logging - I was excited to meet the people, as well as support their village and find some presents for our grandchildren.
Then onto Wind and Clearwater caves.
The cave system at Mulu is 250 km long, making it the eighth largest in the world, so of course we were barely scratching the surface. But what we saw of the beginning of Wind cave was full of beautiful stalactites and stalagmites.
For those non-splunkers amongst us, there are stalactites (hold on tight) and staligmites (build up your might).
A short boat trip and we were at the base of the Clearwater cave walk.
Though the plants above aren't particularly striking, it's worth knowing this spot is the only place in the world that they have been found.
I particularly enjoyed looking up through the top entrance of the cave at the lush vegetation above.
But the main feature of this cave is the flowing river which has shaped much of it. Unfortunately today the water was not clear, due to the heavy rain last night.
Looking up at the roof of the cave, which long ago had collapsed, was breathtaking.
At the end I got to chat with Chris our guide to understand a little bit more about how the cave was formed and also to get to know him a little.
As I asked where he had travelled, he said he hopes to go to Sydney because he has lots of friends there, since he is a Penan Christian in the Borneo Evangelical Church (which grew out of the Australian missionary movement to Borneo in the 1920s, but is now completely led by locals). I shared that I too was a Christian and that I had read about a Swiss man who lived and advocated for the Penan people. I couldn't remember Bruno's name at the time, but Chris immediately knew who I was talking about and said that many of the people in the villages here knew about or had known Bruno. It was one of those special moments when the things I had learnt only because I was preparing for a trip, and the people I meet on the trip comes together.
When we got back, Hamish needed some down time because he wasn't feeling well, so I hiked to Paku waterfall on a boardwalk and a well-marked but muddy trail. Listening again to the story of Bruno when he almost died from a snake bite when he was alone in a rain forest made me a little nervous walking by myself, but I didn't see anything other than this armoured caterpillar.
The dual waterfalls flowing out of the cave system looked terrific, but after last night's rain there was no way I was going to swim as it's normally possible to do.
Thankfully Hamish was feeling well enough for our night walk. Having got his eye in on our froggy night walk, Hamish spotted just as many creatures as the guide.
Unfortunately we had to come back early because it started to rain.
Looking forward to our canopy walk tomorrow morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment