Run through the Jungle part 2

Melaka, Malaysia

OK, so after Kinabalu I flew out to Mulu Park (after clearing customs like 3 times, Malaysia has an anoying habit of making you do it when you switch between Borneo states , a large patch of protected rainforest with some spectacular limestone mountains and caves everywhere.   Again,  Park HQ was tastefully appointed but disappointingly developed after meeting my jungle guide, Peter (all Borneons seem to have dutchish names, I guess stemming from colonial days, hence a lot of Peters, Williams, and Corneliuses, of course they are Dyak and Iboh tribesman, but...) 

The first day we walked down a well lit, stroller safe planked wooden walkway.  A bit dispappointing again, but the caves at the end were rather impressive. One of them, Deer Cave, which features a cool Abe Lincoln likeness, not kidding, is pretty much  completely cavernous -- the biggest chambers in the world allegedly.  The other featured some fantasitc stalac/stalagmites to rival anyhthing I've seen anywhere.  And oh yeah, guano, lots of guano.

Again, the lack of wildlife was a bit disappointing, it's not unlike going through a rainforest exhibit at a high class zoo or museum, but the flora,  again, I can't say enough about it.  Just completely alien, exotic, fantastic, and unbelievable.  Massive broad planar dipterocarps, trees with roots that start 50 feet up, single leaf palms, giant banana plants, carnivorous pitcher plants, giant fishtail palms, Tarzan vines -- just incredible. Combined with the mossy limestone karst backdrop the landscape is truly Cretaceous in nature, you half expect a Velociraptor or more likely Chewbacca or Yoda to come crashing through the underbrush, not an inebriated Japanese with a 3/4 empty bottle of VAT 69.

Day 2 in Sarawak was where things picked up.  Peter and I hopped into a longboat and headed upriver. (Borneons, though short, travel in longboats and live in longhouses.  THe longboats are due to the shallow river (much pushing/punting/pulling is involved in any trip), while the longhouses are due to lack of family planning I guess).  The first stop was a longhouse village, complete with satellite dishes and a rather ugly Evangelical church; at this village I was mildly pressured to buy plastic handicrafts, which I did, though I steered away from the bead hangings that, in a stinging rebuke to Nietcsche (or Ray Nietschke? I forget) declare: "GOD IS ALIVE", which begs several questions. 

The next stop was two more spectacular caves, one of which, at 108k and counting, is apparently the worlds longest.  Again, great stuff, but sensory overloiad kicks in after you've seen underground rivers and sniffed underground guano mountains and have rolled past massive columns of japanese. (ironically, Peter was telling me how his father & grandfather used the caves to hide from the Japanese during the war, which he now leads them to)  After another hour or so upriver in the longboat was where stuff got interesting.

After lunch, an 8k sweaty, exhausting, muddy, hideous hike through the jungle to Camp V awaited us.  It was a huge chore and involved slogging through swollen rivers, quicksand, and even actual hacking at the undergrowth by Peter.  It was totally miserable, but leech free.  In short, I loved every second of it.    That's why you go (or at least I go) to Borneo. 

Camp V was loaded with the normal complement of Aussies, some Flemish (nothing like some Flemish to add character) and a large foulmouthed contingent of cave researcher/explorer types from the RGS. .  Not a lot of leisure activities awaited there save swimming, which in Borneo is like putting up a "FOR RENT" sign for tropical stuff to crawl up your butt so I passed. 

The next day we lit out early for what will be (and I'm serious this time) the last damned thign I climb on this trip.  It's called Gunung Api or something, or more simply the Pinnacles.  It's a colllection of jagged, vertical limestone spines at about 2k m up a tropical mountainside.    While it was the lowest thing I've climbed in a while (now that I am a certified BA Barracus as far as climbing goes) It was by no means easy.  Sweaty and tropical and slippery and nasty at the bottom with sharp skinny limestone jags at the top, augmented by various ropes, precarious ladders, and rickety metal bridges.  The whole thing was quite literally a giantass jungle gym for adults and just a shitlooad of fun to climb around if exhausting and treacherously dangerous. (though to be fair, the good thing about climbing limestone and granite, rather than high altitude Himalayan scree, is that its smooth, firm, entrenched, and doesnt' disentegrate under your hand/foot, making stuff easier).

Again, I can't say enough about the Jurassic Park/Tomb Raider setting of massiver trees, vines, rocks, massive cave openings, etc.  Again, not a lot of fauna, save some serious insects, Borneo Giant Jungle Ants (to farm these guys would require an estate), huge spiders, some distant angry macaques, and a Rhinosceros hornbill, which is apparently the piece de resistance among birders.  Although this is not altogether a bad thing.  While trudging through the jungle, I could not help but remember the days spent in the Reptile House of the Houston Zoo, always my favorite stop there.  I used to spend hours gazing at the various brilliant and lethal looking vipers and cobras, each of which had a placard that said, in big bold letters "VENOMOUS".  I also remmber being reassured, when looking at them most deadly varieties (save the deadly 4 texas snakes, cottonmouth, rattler, copperhead, coral), that their habitats were nowhere near my backyard, and usually were a bunch of islands sort of between Asia and Australia - i. e. here.   No big deal, I though, I'd just avoid big flat rocks, deep roots, and old logs.  Of course, the route up to the Pinnacles involves exclusively big flat rocks, deep roots, and olds logs.  So I resorted to whistling to drive the snakes away.  When Peter said "Why you singing Magal", I embarrasedly stopped and was prepared to suffer the deadly consequences.  

Thankfully, no scaled death dealers approached.  Mostly just some really cool insects, fantastic moths, butterflies, etc; what was not cool were the two six inch millipedes that crawled out of my bag at one point.  Not cool at all.  Especially awesome was the dearth of mosquitos, apparently due to the massive amounts of bats that are flying around my head at this very moment.   Anyway, I got up and down without a VENOMOUS incident, so I considered myself lucky. 

Computer issues again, will continue tomorrow