Thursday, December 19, 2013

Mulu Park, Malaysia - Day 2

We were up at 7am for breakfast (I had pancakes which were okay, a bit crepe-like).

Our morning trek was to Wind and Clearwater Caves. It's a 10 minute boat ride to the starting point - and there's also a tourist stop at Batu Bungan, a local village.

Both caves were okay - the Clearwater cave was better, with its long pathway around the perimeter - there's lighting inside the cave so you can get perspective of just how big it is. The lighting just appears as specks of light in the distance and don't light up the cave (it's too big for that), so you can see the bigness but it doesn't come out in a pic.

Outside the cave it's possible to swim in river, we waited while some of the other tourists took a quick dip.

Back to park HQ for a rushed lunch, and then on to our 2pm trek, to Fast Lane Cave. I think this tour could be an hour, but it's a bit Disney-fied and catering to the slow walkers, so it took us 3 hours.

The cave itself is really cool and worth walking slowly through to appreciate all the stalactites and stalagmites. (It's the 1km walk to the cave at a crawl that was tedious).

As a bonus, the guide couldn't get the cave lights to switch on, so we just had the lighting from 8 flashlights, which added to the adventure.

At one point the formations were as thick as a forest - the walkway was built around stalagmites sticking up the middle of the path.

Back at the chalet, we showered and then waited out the evening rains - good thing we weren't trying to see the bats tonight.

By 7pm the rains let up a bit and we headed over to the park restaurant for dinner. We were running out of things to try on the menu, plus there were more insects with the fewer bats out. We tried a couple different dishes that were okay, and then called it an early night.

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