Mulu National Park, Sarawak, Borneo Today was the day of our time at the park that I think I was most excited for: SPELUNKING! We were lucky enough to finagle a guide, Roland, for just the 3 of us which turned out to be perfect. Roland met us at the park headquarters and we got in another long tail boat up the river on our way to Racer Cave (yet another cave featured on Planet Earth, for reasons that will probably make some readers squeamish!) Upon arrival, we hopped out of the boats and Roland handed us our
gear which consisted of a hardhat with a flashlight attached to the front…yes, that was it J As this is a spelunking cave there is no artificial light once inside and let me tell you, it gets a little eerie. We started out slow and steady as Roland explained to us the formation of the cave and showed us fossils leftover from the river that had once gushed through its chambers. As we continued we realized it was getting darker and darker until we reached our first obstacle: squeezing through a miniature crack in the wall. As a first time spelunker I had my doubts about my abilities in the maneuvering department, but after watching the others fit, I passed through my bag and matrixed my way inside the next room where we came face to face with some of the cave’s locally named residents: Racer snakes. Now, these aren’t your ordinary snakes; these are snakes that live in caves. 
Yes, they live in tiny cracks and openings and crevices (like the one we just squeezed through) and lay in wait for their prey. Impressively, the snakes have developed a heightened ability to recognize infrared heat and, along with sensing movement from the flicking of their tongues, are able to literally strike flying cave swallows and bats out of the air. Sssssstinkssss to be a sssssswallllowwww (that was my best snake impression if you couldn’t tell.) As if the thought of snakes slithering around you in the pitch black wasn’t enough, enter cave creature number 2. I guess I hadn’t completely noticed the glittering of tiny diamond-like specks throughout the cave until Roland had us stop and shine our headlamps around the room. I remember thinking ‘wow, diamonds? Gold? Silver? Some crazy undiscovered mineral?’ Nope, none of those. Upon closer investigation and a spotlight on the subject at hand, we realized 
the little sparkling gems were actually the eyes of the Woodsman spiders that also called the cave home. Now, I’ll be honest I wasn’t thrilled about the snakes (except I had already known all about them from Sigourney Weaver) but she failed to mention anything about spiders, literally as big or bigger than my hand in some cases, watching us as we delved deeper. After a fairly traumatic experience following the watching of Arachniphobia when I was younger (a giant spider ascended from the depths of the faucet in the bathroom sink-much to the dismay of my brother and me) I am not the world’s biggest fan of our 8-legged friends. Still, the show must go on. The next item on the agenda (besides avoiding the stares of 1000s of leering eyes) was our first of five descents into the bowels of Racer. I had had the impression that we would be walking down some paths and seeing some creatures, etc. but when I realized we were going to have to repel down the sides of sheer, slippery walls, my adrenaline w
as pumping. Roland lead the way, talking us through the process as he effortlessly made his way from one crack to the next ledge to the next free grip to the next swoop and swindle. His basic advice was to hold on tightly to the rope, sit back using our feet as the base and trusting our hands to move from point A to point B to point C down the rope. Did I mention this was in complete darkness and without any harnesses? We made stops here and there throughout the cave, checking out cave crickets (which are MASSIVE and have antennae at least 5x that of regular crickets), tiny cave crabs and scorpions, examining different rock formations and basically soaking in another life experience. By the 5th rope I was taking the riskier paths down the walls and even had one part where I basically had to push off the wall, dangle over a crevasse in the floor and leap to the other side. Now, my mother would have probably preferred I take the safer option, but when in R(acer Cave) right? We finally made it to the grand chamber at the end of the cave and Roland had us turn off our lights and experience pure and total darkness. You literally cannot see anything. No matter how much you strain your eyes the only thing you can see is the image in your head produced from the ghostly chorus of the bats and swallows as they flit in organized chaos above your heads. It’s like you could be on the ceiling and they could be on the ground or you could be running and they could be standing still; there’s just no way to grasp it. It’s the closest experience I can use to describe the feeling of invincibility. Cool. The way out of the cave was almost harder than the way in as we had to rescale all the walls we’d just worked so hard to get down. After climbing up waterfalls and 90 degree shelves, we made it out into the daylight with no real injuries, just a few slips and quite a bit of mud on the clothes. UNBELIEVABLE! I think I was the happiest kid in the candy store—that experience will remain one of the top things I will ever do. On our boat ride back, I got to talking with Roland about his life. His family is part of an
indigenous tribe from the area and his father grew up right on the river we were boating on. The tribes used to paddle boats, sometimes for days, upstream to areas they’d burned for farming. Roland said that a lot of the forest we saw in the area is actually secondary growth from these burned spaces. He said that modernization sort of forced the tribal people to move locations and that his father moved his family, on foot, to Lampak in search of a better life—one in which they could have better access to medicine, work, etc. He said he still spent a lot of time on the river as a kid and grew up racing long boats with motors they’d find and refurbish. He said he wanted to preserve this land that meant so much to his people and as such he became a guide. It was fascinating to hear about his experiences and how his way of life was still so much attached to the river and the jungle-some really amazing people in the world. We decided to take a 3 km hike through the jungle after lunch as our last hurrah in Mulu Park. 
Along the way we saw more snakes and spiders and lizards and the like and made it to our much deserved final resting spot: Paku Falls. Now, I can say that I’ve seen more amazing falls in my lifetime, but it’d be hard to say that these weren’t the most refreshing. The 3 of us spent some of the afternoon swimming and floating in the river below the waterfalls and once again looking up in awe at our surroundings amidst the deep green of the Rain Forest. I think it’s fair to say 
that we were absolutely wiped after our time at the park. We had packed a serious amount of activities into a short amount of time, but I can safely say that we left with no regrets. There are definitely some other excursions that I would do were I ever to come back, but I think we got everything and more out of our randomly booked flight to Borneo (thanks for the special promotion AirAsia!) My head hit the pillow after our full day with every intention of falling asleep, as visions of bats and snakes danced through my head…BUT one little critter thought it would foil my plans and keep me awake pretty much alllll night. The previous night we’d had a little visitor (presumably a mouse) that found its way into our plastic bag of bread and other goods-not to mention the ants that found my peanut butter as a perfect oasis from the steamy jungle. Anyway, to prevent said mouse from eating our food we double wrapped the bread in plastic bags and put it on the nightstand between Emily’s and my bed. I was awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of crinkling plastic and I immediately reached for the night stand. The noise stopped. Okay, it was just the wind. 5 minutes later…crinkle crinkle crinkle. I reached out again…it stopped. Now I was getting a bit peeved, but readjusted the bag and rolled over. I must have fallen back to sleep, because before I knew it the sound was back. I grabbed my phone and turned on the flashlight to investigate and saw that a hole had been nibbled through one of the bags. Great, not only is our bread getting eaten in the middle of the night, but I am literally sleeping next to some creature that I cannot see. Not knowing what to do I retied the bag and rolled over only to be awakened again—this time I got up and moved the bag across the room hoping to quell the little bugger. OH NO. Mighty Mouse found his way across the room and continued munching and crinkling all through the night as I tossed and turned, my visions of bats and snakes replaced with mice and rats and prehistoric jungle rodents gnawing at my sleeping body. Daylight couldn’t come soon enough. Thank you so much MULU, truly the experience of a lifetime, but I think it’s time to go.
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