Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Having trekked to our viewing place it was time to hang out and wait for the sun to go down and the bats of Mulu to take flight.
If memory serves there were maybe four of us tourists and a couple of guides. As we were waiting a band of showers crossed the Mulu hills. In fact, best I can tell, I never got a clean shot of Mount Mulu. Every shot I have shows the mountains shrouded in cloud.
In the photo below, a light shower drifts across the other side of the valley while the sun, dipping to the west but still quite high in the sky, reflects off the falling raindrops as a rainbow. The rainbow is formed when sunlight enters the water droplet and is refracted, then gets reflected off the back of the water droplet and refracted again on exiting the droplet. The point of maximum intensity occurs at an angle between 40 and 42 degrees to the line between the observers head and its shadow. So the higher the sun is in the sky, the closer the rainbow’s arc is to the horizon. When the sun climbs above 42 degrees, the rainbow is below the horizon, so you can’t see it unless you’re in a plane or on a mountain. This is why the strongest and most impressive rainbows occur shortly after sunrise or just before sunset where the top of the arc approaches it’s maximum 42 degrees of elevation above the horizon.
The separation of colors is a human eye thing. If this photo were in black and white there’s just be a peak in the intensity where the rainbow is but no actual separation of luminosity or brightness to show the color banding.
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Monday, February 11, 2013
The trail we were following to get to our bat flight viewing experience ran close to the cliff edge in places as you can see in the photo below, of a longboat heading downriver.
I’m looking almost straight down into this longboat. There are four people in it. A man at the bow, another at the stern and two women in the middle. The two women have a suitcase each, the red one being very obvious. I wonder how sharp this image would be it I took it today with my Canon 5D Mark II and an ‘L’ series auto-focus lens with image stabilization. That’s because this was shot on 100 ISO slide file using a Canon T90 and most likely a zoom at 300mm and not an ‘L’ series lens at that.
In the shadow on the far bank, the longboat heading downriver has just passed a small jetty. That’s how I know this one is heading downriver, because the bow of the boat tied up at the jetty is facing the other way.
I wondered where the women were going. It was too late to get to Long Terawan by nightfall so my guess is they were headed to a longhouse or other settlement not quite so far away and maybe continuing on in the morning. Of course, they could have had some form of light but I don’t recall traffic on the rivers at night.
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Sunday, February 10, 2013
From high on a hillside we had a great view down onto the river and the new arrivals coming upstream.
This photo was taken in the Gunung Mulu National Park in 1989. I don’t actually know which river this is. It could be the Melinau but I think it more likely to be a tributary. The angle of view gives a hint to the steepness of the hillside we were climbing. The longboat is heading to the jetty just a little ahead of it. In the trees to the right of the jetty is a guesthouse of some sort, hence all the longboats at the jetty. My guess is these new arrivals were going to stay in the guesthouse. (duh)
In the distance, the limestone hills rise steeply from the valley floor, the outlines of a limestone cliff visible in the hills just left of center. We were climbing a trail up similar hills on the northern side of this valley in order to watch the bats stream out of the caves of Mulu at dusk.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
There are two standard ways to commute in Mulu. One way is by foot, the other is by boat. But many trips require both.
In the photo below my guides are taking me out on the river to to get to a trail that leads up into the hills to a viewing point from where we would watch the bats fly out at dusk.
This is the same boat and same guides that brought me to Mulu from Long Terawan (and that would return me to Long Terawan two days later for my return trip. Unlike the Boat Boys, our longboat had an outboard motor so we didn’t have to pole it along the river. That would have taken much longer. I guess the Victorian explorers used canoes of some sort to navigate the river. That must have taken huge effort, especially when headed upstream, and must have been a comparatively slow process. On the other hand, they wouldn’t have had a ticket for a flight in a few days time and would not have had the time pressures we put ourselves under today.
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Today’s photo is a little to the left and a tighter shot of the hills of the Gunung Mulu National Park of the photo I posted a few days back.
To the right you can see examples of the limestone cliffs that feature in this area (they’re on the left in the photo I posted earlier). Up in the hills in the top left corner you can see a collapsed surface. These highlight some of the challenges of hiking in this area. The terrain makes it extremely difficult but you could be hiking along and find yourself on the edge of a cliff. Being so far from help, that’s why you stay on the trails.
The rocks here are soft limestones and sandstones. Mount Mulu itself is sandstone so this area has seen some major tectonic activity resulting in the lifting of the rock layers followed by massive erosion. The frequent and heavy tropical rains have eroded both mechanically and chemically these soft rock layers to form these hills and valleys, and the caves that lay beneath them, aided by the cracks in the rock layers. The erosion in the top left of the photo is almost certainly caused by heavy water run-off from the hills above finding and enlarging a stress fracture in the rock to the point that this chasm now exists.
The caves of Mulu themselves became known of in the 1850s because the explorers of the day noticed rivers and streams disappearing underground or emerging from the base of cliffs in the area. Some of the passages at Mulu are so massive because of the sheer volumes of water that fall here when it rains. I mentioned before that I started caving in the Mendip hills of England in the 1970′s. While people in England think its rains a lot there, in reality, compared to the tropics of South East Asia, it does not – nowhere near as heavy for nowhere near as long.
Indeed, I find myself bemused and concerned at how little an amount of rain is needed in the UK now to cause massive flooding. Here on the Texas Gulf Coast we’ll get as much rain from a storm cloud in an hour as the UK will see in a bad day. Now that’s rain but it’s still nothing compared to a monsoon rain event in Borneo!
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Thursday, February 7, 2013
I took this photo from the banks of the Melinau River in the Gunung Mulu National Park in Sarawak, back in 1989.
When I arrived at this location the three boys were playing in the big tree and jumping into the river. They must have gotten bored with that and decided to go do something different. It wasn’t as if it was an out-of-time thing since none of them had watches.
Rather than use paddles, they navigated their boat upstream and across the river by poling – not as elegant as punting but the same general approach. I thought it interesting that the boy in the middle was bailing out the boat. It must have a had a leak in it for there was no obvious event I witnessed to have flooded the boat.
I also found the name of the boat to be curious – ‘Carlsberg’ copied in a similar style to the beer company’s logo text. It just seemed so out of place in this setting.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
On one of my day hikes around Gunung Mulu National Park we came upon this longhouse.
These buildings are multi-family dwellings with a public space along one side and private divided spaces on the other. The raised floor protects against flooding when it rains and allows air to circulate keeping the structure cooler when it’s not raining. Traditionally, the roof would have been made from leaves but that lost out to the technology of corrugated iron many years ago. I can’t image how noisy it is in there during a storm!
Sometimes the space under the longhouse is used for livestock, other times it can be used for other activities. I’ve photos taken in a different longhouse, one more open to tourists gawking upon the local lifestyle, of men and women threshing rice, making baskets, chopping firewood. etc. I suspect after we left they went back inside, got a cold beer from the fridge and slumped in front of the TV – The men I saw were wearing jeans, T-shirts and baseball caps.
I felt embarrassed taking photos of these folk so have only one or two. I thought of the situation in reverse and how I would feel if a bunch of people speaking a foreign language descended on my home and watched and photographed me doing my chores. After all, I wasn’t there living with them and documenting their way of life for the RGS or Nat Geo. I was just passing through.
I find it interesting that longhouses are found around the world in many diverse cultures, for example single-structure villages in the South American jungle, Iroquois longhouses in North America and medieval longhouses in Europe. But having lived for many years in more communal university dorms, desert camps, apartment blocks, hotels, etc. I’m now quite attached to my livestock free, corrugated iron free, single family dwelling.
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Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Gunung Mulu National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The park is named for Mount Mulu. Mulu is probably most famous for it’s enormous caves, including the Sarawak Chamber, the largest known natural chamber in the world. Discovered in 1981 it’s estimated at three times the size of the Big Room in the Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico, USA – previously thought to be the world’s largest natural cavern. While I’ve visited the Big Room several times, I did not have the opportunity to visit the Sarawak Chamber so I can only try to imagine it’s vast emptiness. One metric used to convey the size of the Sarawak Chamber is that it could hold 40 Boeing 747s without overlapping their wings!
Above ground Gunung Mulu National Park is a network of rivers and trails cut through the rainforest. Today’s photo is one view over the park. On this day, Mount Mulu itself was shrouded in cloud. In the foreground just right of center you can make out a stretch of a river. I can’t speak for now but in 1989, transport was either by longboat on the rivers or by foot. I’ve no particular memory of the hike to the elevation from which I took this photo but it may well have been in preparation for watching the bats stream out of the caves at dusk.
If you’ve seen the bats leave the Congress Bridge in Austin, Texas, I can tell you that is insignificant when compared to the bats leaving Mulu. And If you’ve not seen the bats leave the Congress Bridge in Austin, Texas, and you’re ever in or near Austin, I highly recommend you hang out at dusk for 30 minute to watch.
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I’d hesitate to call this definitely a Clearwater Cave exit but that’s where it falls in my image sequence. It’s certainly the exit of one of the Mulu caves.
What’s the difference between an entrance and an exit? Just the way you’re traveling, I guess. I don’t recall any one-way signs but the entrances to the shoe caves are signed on the surrounding trails so I guess that forms a semi-official one-way system.
Another way to get to the Gunung Mulu National Park is from Limbang. You take a boat up-river and then hike the Headhunter Trail – typically a three to four day hike assuming you are reasonably fit (and don’t meet any headhunters).
The reason that sprang to mind was the skull-like shape just up and right of the center of this photo. It’s actually just the way the sun in breaking through the jungle canopy to illuminate that one spot on this cave exit, but it does look like a disembodied head!
OK, so Jacoby Jones is the only NFL player I’ve ever had my photo taken with. After his muffed punt return last season for the Houston Texans, many in Houston were happy when the Texans waived him. While at the Texans his side-to side yardage was impressive but his up the field yardage, the yardage that counts, not so much.
He seems to have had a turnaround under new coaches at Baltimore – he seems to fit better into their offensive scheme – and he’s had a terrific post-season. With is 56-yard touchdown reception and his record-breaking 109 yard kick-off return, he had a fantastic game.
Didn’t think much of the ads – maybe becuase I’d seen many of them on the web before the game. My best ad of the game vote goes to the Tide commercial with the Montana Stain. Worst ad of the game the 35-minute Entergy power outage at the start of the second half. Many of the folks that live in Louisiana have had to experience Entergy outages, and now they’ve brought their outages to the whole world.
With Jacoby Jones in 2011
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by Richard Davis