I had done the research on activities in Mulu National Park a couple of months ago, so my recollection of the Garden of Eden walk was along the lines of “cave….walking….beautiful….something…..isolated….swimming”. It all sounded very nice and I was determined to do something great since we’d come all the way to Mulu.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So I took my super hard core tablets from the jungle doctor in the morning and we set off with our guide and two other couples on a nice leisurely stroll along the boardwalk through the rainforest. We spotted all kinds of weird insects and bugs and it was beautifully cool under the shape of the canopy….I was glad I’d risked the jungle pills to see a bit more of the forest.<\/p>\n
We reached Deer Cave after about an hour and it was pretty spectacular – a massive cavern with huge black patches on the roof that were actually the three million bats that lived there. We donned our headlamps and started the clamber over boulders to make our way out of the cave…I didn’t quite remember reading about that, but it was still okay.<\/p>\n
Then the climbing got a bit hairier…and I was pretty lightheaded anyway….it was a long way to the ground and the rocks were kind of slippery. The only way to keep from plunging off the rocks into an enormous pile of guano was to grip onto the rocks with my hands while I felt for foot holds. Unfortunately the rocks were also completely covered in guano. You know things have got pretty bad when you’re wrist deep in bat crap and you don’t even care….(and it stank too, just to add another layer of unpleasantness)<\/p>\n
After a very lengthy period of climbing, jumping and scrambling, we came out of the cave into the river and rainforest: the Garden of Eden. (I apologise in advance if my writing is disjointed, but we’re now in Miri and managed to pick another hostel where the minarets of a mosque are pointed directly in the windows. There is currently a very lengthy prayer blaring in and almost rattling my keyboard…I think it’s interfering with my brain). We washed off the guano as best we could, but that stuff is like glitter..it ends up everywhere. Somehow it was in our eyebrows, ears, teeth….<\/p>\n
We started up the river, walking through the water up to our calves, which was wonderfully refreshing. I had my awesomely fashionable hiking sandals on, and Josh had bought some cheap rubber sneakers which were in the process of rubbing the back of his ankles completely raw. The guide had absolutely no interest in how any of us were going, and he had powered ahead up into the jungle. I made some comment to Josh about his great guiding, then proceeded to slip over and possibly fracture my left butt cheek.<\/p>\n
We followed the path up into the jungle where I promptly acquired two leeches on my lower leg. After I yelled for a bit (“get them off! get them off!” etc) I then remembered reading somewhere that you aren’t actually supposed to pull leeches off…for some reason. We figured that the guide would have a lighter for such occasions, so we crashed through the jungle trying to catch up with him (while my leech friends got considerably fatter). And let me tell you, leeches hurt. Not all the time, but when they dug their tiny leech fangs in, I was yelling (mostly bad things about the guide leaving us behind). We finally found him…at the end of the track, at the waterfall. He laughed at my leeches, pulled them off, and I proceeded to bleed all over the place. Ironically, if I’d just pulled them off at the start, the wouldn’t have done any damage, compared to the giant leech wounds I’m now sporting.<\/p>\n
Anyway, we chose to dangle our feet in the water, rather than going for a swim (due to the possibilities of hidden leeches in even worse places). On the tramp back through the river (after slipping again and possibly fracturing my other butt cheek), I pulled one leech off the back of Josh’s leg, found another enormous one under my foot (leaving me with an impressive one-sided stigmata type wound), and then Josh discovered one on his toe. That one was really going to town, I practically had to gouge it out with a stone to get it off. All together, I had seven leeches try to hitch a ride.<\/p>\n
After that joy, we had to go back in the cave to climb through the guano all over again. However, given my fear of rock climbing type activities, I was quite proud of myself for making it out with no broken limbs. We checked out another cave, with some impressive formations (and no guano) and made our way to the viewing area to wait for the bat exodus.<\/p>\n
By this stage we were absolutely disgusting – sweaty, bruised, bleeding, and covered in guano. But the bats were worth the wait – I’ve been sitting here trying to think how to describe how they moved across the sky….like a snake…no….maybe like a school of fish….okay, wait for the video.<\/p>\n
When we got back to the dorm for a shower (despite my first comment “we really should stop taking such relaxing holidays”), I honestly said “that was fun”. And the guano washed off. Okay, it actually didn’t, because today we both seemed to have patches of suspicious blackness, which we’ve chosen to label “jungle dirt”.<\/p>\n
I don’t think I can take too much more blaring prayer, so I’ll sign off. Thanks for your well wishes on my health!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had done the research on activities in Mulu National Park a couple of months ago, so my recollection of the Garden of Eden walk was along the lines of “cave….walking….beautiful….something…..isolated….swimming”. It all sounded very nice and I was determined to do something great since we’d come all the way to Mulu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[21],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=559"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":563,"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions\/563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}