The next morning, we caught our flight to Mulu National Park. As we were flying in, all you could see is forest. There was so many trees, I was scared we were actually going to land in the forest. With a huge sigh of relief, we flew into a tiny airport that consisted of one room. Once we arrived to the National Park, we hired a tour guide to take us to the Deer Caves and Lang Caves. The Deer Cave is the biggest cave in Southeast Asia. Both caves were spectacular. The Lang Cave had one entrance and went long ways. The Deer Cave had a massive entrance and was enormous in the inside by width and in height. If you look up, you could see a sea of black, which were the 300 million bats that live in the cave. At 6pm the bats, all 300 million bats flee the cave to hunt for food. The site was spectacular, and this whole process went on for about an hour. Later, we met a Canadian boy from Winnipeg named Matthew aka Jungle Man that convinced us to head out the next day and do the Pinnacles trek. This trek was a 2.8 km hike on a 60 degree angle to reach the top of the mountain. Although the hike seemed a little advanced for our liking, we decided to take up the challenge and do this hike before we headed for the Headhunters trail. The Headhunters trail was our original plan, which is a 11km hike to a Sarawak longhouse village.
We stocked up on 6 packs of cupped noodles, peanutbutter, crackers and nuts and were off to the jungle. The first day, we woke up at 6am to begin our trek to the pinnacles. If you didn’t make it to a certain point of the mountain by 11am, you had to go back down. I also was a little scared after I had read the post on the wall saying “Warning: This trek is for advanced hikers. You must be extremely physically fit if you plan on completing the trek”. All I was thinking was Yikes, eating noodles and crackers probably isn’t the best food to eat before this hike.
After a long 8 hours of hiking, I had successfully made it to the top and down. The way up was physically strenuous and the way down was all mental. If you lost concentration for more than a second, it was very easy to slip and fall. With only one minor wipe out and a few bruises and scratches, I made it down alive! The pinnacles at the top were phenomenal! Pinnacles are sharp limestone rock formations that grow in bunches. Does this mean I am an advanced hiker and extremely physically fit? Sweet!
The next morning, we were headed up the Headhunters Trail. The trail was great. On the hike we were told to look for the 5 different types of tropical forest. I wish I could say I pointed out all 5 types of trees, but unfortunately they all kind of looked the same to me. But aside from my lack of knowledge on trees and plants, it was a great hike! The forest, wildlife and rock formations were breathtaking. We finally made it to the water after about 3 hours of hiking and then took a 3 hour boat ride to the longhouse village. Our tour guide had a knee injury and started drinking 52% alcohol to ease the pain. I guess they don’t have medicine in the jungle? After we witnessed him complete a whole bottle of “medicine” in the 3 hour boat ride, he wasn’t as informative as we would have liked. Once we got the village, it was a little bit of a culture shock. The longhouse was a worn down shack shared by many families. With that said, our homestay was certainly no 5 star hotel. It consisted of mats in a room with bug nets over them. I especially liked the Disney character sheets and lime green wall, really gave it a nice touch. The rest of the evening, we visited a local school in the village. The children stay there for the duration of the school year. The school was unexpectedly quite advanced with classrooms, desks, a cafeteria and computers.
Sarawak, Borneo and Gunung Mulu National Park was different from any place I have been so far. It was a perfect mix of natural beauty, nature, and authentic culture. Next up was our stop in Brunei… also a very authentic experience.
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