Apr 19 - Kind of tired from late sleep so only get up around 7:30. Eat breakfast at the homestay and I go to the park with Odette, as Janet is feeling a bit off. I get a key for the Tree Top Tower and we march up there, though bird life, even at the canopy, is sparse. Go back down to the Botanic Trail, that meanders around the jungle floor and crosses the Sungai Lupar River several times. Plenty of good signage here, explaining the flora and fauna of Gunung Mulu in detail. It is written in a way that is engaging for kids, which I am glad to see, and Odette is happy to read.
Take some good insect pictures and head back to the homestay to get lunch. Janet did go into the park on her own, but we all meet up and force down some nasi goreng. Then back to the park for our first official guided tour at 14:30. It is one of four tours I arranged by email back in January.
It starts raining as we wait, continuing for the next few hours. Go the same way south, passing the trailhead to Paku Waterfall, then continuing over the river to the observation point for bats coming out of Deer Cave. Plenty more opportunities along the way for insect and arthropod photos. One river we parallel is in a flood stage due to today’s rainstorm.
Deer Cave has one of the largest cave entrance in the world. Its name is from the deer who used to go into the entrance to drink (salty water from the bat guano). This is also a massive entrance, with several collapse features that provide windows into the cavern above the underground river. See a cave catfish. The trail inside follows an underground river. Odette and Janet see a turtle. Further in, the bat guano gets thick and we see the typical formations of a limestone cave. Small cockroaches scurry around the guano, and there are broken eggshells from the swifts, which also nest near where the bats roost.
Lang Cave is next door to Deer Cave. It is much smaller, but still hosts thousands of bats.
Back outside the cave, go the bat observatory area.
Sit at the bat observatory area from 17:30-18:30. It is sort of rainy, but the bats come out anyway. It isn’t a solid stream, but pulses of bat groups, perhaps a few hundred at a time, that swirl around and then take off in a long, twisting, ribbonlike form. As they go up and out, the ribbon reforms into more of an elliptical mass. It is hypnotizing to watch the ribbon of bats move, as the members of the group are echolocating off each other and attempting to coordinate. To add drama, there is a large bat hawk swooping in to try and grab bats out of the swarms.
Getting dark as we head back to the park entrance, so it’s a bit like a night walk. A Dutch family is there with two children near Odette’s age, so they have fun searching for creatures with their flashlights. See a centipede, some different millipedes, worms, frogs, and geckos.
