Tag:jungle
In the photo below we’d progressed further into the cave and were about to lose sight of the mighty entrance we’d passed through. You can see a set of wooden stairs to the right of the frame. The movement of the torch held by the man behind the railing hints at the exposure length. Since I didn’t have a tripod I must have braced my camera against a rock formation or another railing.
It was here that I made a mistake I was to repeat several times in the caves – I stepped off the path. The material on the floor in front of me is tens of thousands of years accumulation of bat and swiftlet droppings – a big steaming pile of bat shit! I didn’t realize that till I stepped off the path and my foot started to sink into this soft, gooey material. As I said, I made that same mistake several times!
The photo below is a view of one of the entrances to Clearwater Cave. You can get an idea of the scale by noticing how tiny the 3~4 foot wide concrete footpath, stairs and railing in the lower right corner.
Low cloud fills a valley in this photo taken in the Gunung Mulu National Park while another layer of cloud shrouds the ridge leading to Mount Mulu.
The answer is in the photo below. At some point in this boat’s history the owners obviously decided to do away with the advanced steering system and replace it with a manual one. I really didn’t think about it at the time but looking back now I think these guys managed to scrape together enough money to buy a derelict hull and bolt a new(ish) outboard to it. Hey Presto – people will now pay us to ferry them up and down river!
I’m reasonably sure this photo was taken on the Melinau because the river is so narrow (comparatively). All-in-all it took me a day to get up-river from Miri to Mulu. Sometimes it takes longer if the boats get delayed, the river’s low or you can’t find a longboat to charter. Through my contacts in Brunei, I had everything arranged for me in advance so my boat changes were planned and I was expected.
