Borneo 2015 – day 04

Thursday 2nd July

This morning, we checked out of our hotel in Kuching, caught a cab to the airport and took the flight to Gunung Mulu National Park. Our plane could have carried about 72 passengers, but was only burdened with about 10 of us. This meant that all 3 of us could have a window seat. A rare treat for me, who usually gets the aisle seat, as Max wants the window seat.
We landed in Mulu around lunchtime. Temperature was a fairly warm 35 degrees C, and humidity was about 85%…
We were driven the 1.4km to the National Park headquarters, where we checked in for our accommodation and booked our spots on a couple of caving expeditions over the next couple of days.
We very soon realised that our local SIM cards (purchased in Kuching) were of very little use out here. We generally have 50-75% coverage for phone calls, but data connectivity occurs maybe 2% of the time. This means there’ll be no Facebook updates or posting of images until we get back to civilization on Sunday afternoon.
Having settled into our room, we decided to do the walk to Paku Falls (about 3km each way). At the halfway point, we encountered a couple who said that they had followed the path for at least as far as the signposts indicated, but had found no sign of any waterfall. We decided we’d take our chances anyway. Unfortunately, the path doesn’t give you any indication of how far you’ve gone or far you still have to go, so we just kept plodding along until sure enough, we came across this lovely little section of the river with the waterfall. I had assumed that the waterfall would be in the course of the river (i.e. that the river would flow over the waterfall). But in actual fact, the waterfall consists of an underground water source exiting from the side of a mountain and falling into the river at right angles. It’s a very picturesque spot, and quite a nice spot for a quiet dip in the water.
While we were enjoying our relaxing time in the river, I noticed something floating toward us. A little mischieviously, I said to Cath, “Look, there’s a tarantula coming to get you”. Then, as it floated closer to us, we realised that it was in fact, a dead tarantula! And like the ones you’ve seen in all the nature documentaries, it was huge.
After spending an hour or so lazing in this quiet river pool, we headed back to the Park headquarters, dinner, our room and an early night.

Take me to: day 00 | day 03 | day 05