What do two million bats look like?

We enjoy an adventure, but lets be frank: sliding through claustrophobically thin, muddy gaps in caves doesn’t overly appeal to us.  Actually the sliding through isn’t so bad, it’s more the getting stuck that is the problem.  

Nevertheless, we found other reasons to make the effort of two separate flights by propellor plane to reach the caves of Mulu National Park, set deep in the vast (remaining) rainforests of Sarawak.   Firstly, it hosts access to Deer Cave, the world’s largest cave passage, and secondly, you can witness the extraordinary sight of a two million strong bat exodus at just before dusk.  

By the way - is it just me that feels a trifle uneasy when your window seat is directly by the propellors, such that, however unlikely it may seem, if one of the propellor blades DID manage to detach itself, the most likely destination would be slicing through my little window.  If I pressed my head back into my seat, I might just get a way with a shaved nose I suppose.......

So when we finally arrived at the tiny airport of Mulu, anticipation levels were running high.  As if to suspend our excitement, we decided to leave the bat exodus and Deer Cave for the last day, and headed off next morning by boat up the river ahead of a hike to a couple of other caves, and later also enjoying a night walk. 

Of course I'd have volunteered my finger,
but I had to concentrate on the photograph....

Amongst our encounters were a huntsman spider which we was not quite as large as we’d imagined........until we saw another one twice the size shortly after! Somehow they don’t look quite as scarey on a tree as they do on your pillow, but nevertheless they are poisonous and you should keep well away.  We learned a useful rule of thumb for spiders: If they are bigger than your thumb, keep away! OK, here's the real rule.  If they use a web to catch their prey, they are less likely to be poisonous - their web is their weapon, whereas spiders that hunt with no web need poison as their weapon to attack their prey.  (The Australian funnel web and red-back are two exceptions, however.) 

Black-bearded gliding lizard - that glided away off Frankie's hand as if to prove this.

VERY noisy tree frog

Borneo red cricket

Wagler's pit viper. (So what's it doing in a tree?  The
'pit' refers to the characteristic dents in it's cheeks)

Another river adventure.........

Very tempting to jump on one, where better to try a real Tarzan impression?

Although we've been in many caves over the years, Jules and I had never heard of helictites. These are primarily sideways growths, where a water droplet gets to the edge of a small hole and teeters for so long that it deposits it’s microscopically small limestone crystal on the edge, and over time (a very long time) more crystals are deposited and the helictite grows outwards.  

Example of a helictite

Great white rock shark

T-Rex.....apparently

Only 2,000 years to go then......

The following day, we hiked 4 km to Deer Cave. It was absolutely vast.  The entire cave system is over 200km long.  We walked in well over a kilometre, before the cave passage began to narrow.

The cave was so tall, that unlike the other caves we’d seen, there are no stalagmites - it was explained to us that the water frequently evaporates before it reaches the bottom! This seemed at odds with the steady streams of drops that we could see in front of us everywhere.  Then we realised that this in fact was not lovely, refreshing, cool water, but warm, smelly bat pee, cascading down from the millions of little bats clinging to the roof of the cave! But to be fair, the smell of bat pee pales next to the pungent stench from the bat poo that is EVERYWHERE!  

It's much, much bigger than this meagre effort shows

The final thrill was to watch the bat exodus.  We stared at the cave in anticipation from about 300 metres away.  Strange that this massive cave now looked small, set into the side of a larger mountain. After a while, we saw this curious brown-grey flickering, it was the first tranche of the bats exiting.  They flew outwards and upwards, towards the last rays of the sun, before turning an imaginary corner and spiralling across the sky above us like some peculiar horizontal tornado. As you looked closely, you could see thousands and thousands of bats flying broadly together but each one seemingly moving in random motion within this wider whole. And after they passed, we saw wave after wave of the same thing, almost as if they had arranged to leave the cave in organised groups. It was an amazing sight, and made the lengthy trip well worth the effort.

They just kept coming and coming.......you could hear
an almost menacing buzzing sound as they passed overhead.