Borneo 2015 – day 06

Saturday 4th July

Today, we took a longboat up the river to see the Cave of the Winds and Clearwater Cave. Because this is the ‘dry’ season, the river has dropped in level somewhat, and there were sections where we were scraping the bottom of the boat against the smooth river stones on the bottom.
Inevitably, there came a point at which myself and the only other male adult in our party had to jump out and assist the guide (not the guy driving the boat) to drag the boat over the rocks to the next section of water deep enough to float it.
We ended up having to do this about 3 times on our journey up river, and twice on our return journey. For the return journey, we were running with the current, and I suspect that that helped us once or twice…
On the way up, we also stopped for 15mins at a local village where there has a handicraft market. Max bought himself a short (40cm/15in) blowpipe and 4 darts, while I picked up a small replica of a hunting shield. That will go on a wall at home as a momento of our trip.
We continued up river to a small jetty which seemed like it was clinging to the limestone rockface for fear of falling into the river itself. We alighted from the boat and climbed 100 stairs or so to the entrance to the Cave of the Winds.
This cave was not as large as some of the others we’ve been through this week, and we were finished it in about 15 minutes.
Then, we jumped back on the boat for another short 1 minute ride further upriver to the Clearwater Cave. This cave was truly spectacular. The climb to the entrance was worthy of a guest appearance on The Biggest Loser. Exactly 200 stairs which climbed about 40 metres vertically. It was challenging (still lugging the aforementioned 12kg camera bag, or course)! But again, well worth the experience. The cave featured a range of various sizes of cavernous spaces, with a raging underground river running through it. Unfortunately, without a tripod, it was hard to get the kind of images I’d have liked to have got, but I did put my trusty Gorillapod to good use, wrapping it around the steel handrail a few times to give me a secure and stable point from which to shoot. I shot a couple of panoramas here, and one or two bracketed sets which I will need to post-process once I get home (look for those in this photoset). This cave certainly made up for the 2 caves we visited yesterday, which had left us feeling a little underwhelmed after the magnificence of the Fairy Cave outside of Kuching earlier in the week.
After we finished in Clearwater Cave, we gingerly descended the staircase from hell, dumped all of our gear on the picnic tables at the bottom, and went for a swim in the Clearwater pool alongside the picnic area. The water was cool and refreshing after the strenuous climb, and there was a couple of bats flying around the pool picking off insects. I tried to get a photo of the bats, but they move so fast and make such erratic turns that they are almost impossible to capture. I managed to get one half-decent shot which I will include with the image set, but it’s not exactly National Geographic-worthy! This strikes me as one of those photography niches you need to practise for hundreds of hours to get any get good at. The bats fly so fast and make such erratic turns that the camera’s AF system struggles to keep up with them. I also wondered about whether or not the bats are able to perceive the infrared AF beam. I know they use echolocation for their navigation, and I’m not sure how similar that might be to infrared technology. Perhaps they perceive the infrared beam as some kind of obstacle that needs to be avoided?
We spent the afternoon in our bungalow, giving our feet a chance to recover from the caving this morning, and to prepare for the 2 hour night walk we’d booked.
The night walk was essentially a slow stroll through the jungle via torchlight, looking for the various nightlife that inhabits the leaves and lower branches of the trees, ferns and shrubs. I elected not to take the camera on this walk, as I felt the use of flash would kill the ambience. In hindsight, I probably should have taken it. We saw an interesting collection of creatures, including giant snails with shells about the size of a tennis ball, an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare collection of spiders, multiple stick insects, the biggest crickets I have ever seen, a scorpion, and a deadly green tree viper.
These last couple of days have been very physically intense, and to be honest, I’m actually looking forward to the flight to Kinabalu tomorrow, because it will mean a day of NOT walking miles and miles! The downside of course will be a day devoid of photos.