Caves and Bats

Taxi rank

Awoke early to the dulcet tones of 45 roosters and a generator outside my window - unfortunately not ours, since the power was now off. We set off via longboat to a small village not far from the park, where we were invited to buy local handicrafts. They were actually nice, but again my space is limited to bring things home. We continued upriver to Wind Cave, which is the most recent of the four show caves to be opened to the public. It (and also the others, I think) was a burial site for the native people and before it could be opened, the shamans had to appease the spirits.

Lady Cave icon

The most impressive part of Wind Cave was the King's Chamber. It did look pretty regal in there with all the stalacmites. There were all sorts of formations that looked like they had been created by artists: the arm of Hercules, an eagle, a llama and about 3 others. Photos didn't do them justice unfortunately! We walked out and along a boardwalk around the hill, along to Clearwater Cave. This is the largest of the caves and I think the 8th longest cave system in the world (used to be 10th but they found some more last year). The first part was very "Ghostbusters II," with an underground river. It flows out of the cave via a sump with a tiny opening at the bottom. How do we know it's tiny? Because Burong has dived to the bottom of it (in scuba) for work. He got stuck with the sucking pressure and had to be pulled out by ropes. The interesting thing is that 10 metres below the river mouth down the sump hole, they found another outlet so there's actually a second river underneath the main one. That is quite cool. Again, photos did no justice to this place, but we went up to Lady Cave (see photo for why it's called that) which had a bit more light.

Bat stream twisting through the sky

After the walk we had a picnic lunch at the Clearwater Caves rest area, which has the cleanest toilets I have ever seen in a national park. There was a swimming area too, so Colby and I swam for a while. Colby and Mitch are Aussies who live in Newcastle, they met at Dive Skate & Ski so we know many of the same people which is cool. They were really nice and we saw them most places we went.

Another thrilling afternoon at Benarat awaited us and I fell asleep drooling on my book. 3:30 finally rolled around and we headed off to Deer Cave again, this time reaching the Garden of Eden out the back. We also saw the area where naked bats live along with their co-species the EARWIGS... of all the insects I hate, the earwig has to be up the top of the list. I got out of there pretty quickly!

All sorts of shapes

We were out at the bats again by 5:30, and just before 6pm they began to make small sorties out of the cave, twisting across the sky in a big bat stream. After about 10 minutes they became a steady river of bats that never seemed to end. It sounded like a swarm of bees from where we were, with all the little beating wings. The bats are about a quarter the size of those we have in Melbourne, probably even smaller, and they stay in the big group for a while to avoid the bat hawks and other predators who wait for them at the cave mouth.

It was all over by 6:15 and we walked back, much quicker this time. Dinner was good again, and then Burong took us over to the Royal Mulu Resort to watch the cultural show. It wasn't bad, certainly more interesting than the crickets at Benarat.