WEEK 1 – back to the boat

Hullo all
We arrived back at the boat on Friday 6 January in the evening in the rain. Pacific Express was in excellent condition with just a touch of mould on the deck. We unpacked and fell into bed – it was a long trip back. Brett and Delphine flew into Kuching from their holiday in Cambodia. Kuching was even wetter than Miri was. Over the next couple of days we shopped and Peter did the engine mounts which turned out to be an all day job. We put the sails back up and the next day Peter changed the oil pressure sender unit on the motor and the fuel filters.

At 10am on Tuesday the 10th we flew to Mulu National Park and Brett and Delphine flew in at 12. Mulu is central Borneo and all jungle and caves. The caves were discovered around 1977 although of course the local tribes have always known about them. They have built extensive board walks through the jungle to the caves. It has an extensive cave system and boasts the largest and longest in the world. We did the 2pm tour of Lang and Deer Caves which were truly amazing. We were just about to go in to Lang Cave when we heard this almighty bang and the ground shook. We thought it was a huge tree hitting the ground but the guide thought it was a huge rock so we were quite pleased we hadn’t gone to the other cave first – gave us all quite a start!! We waited for the bat exodus towards evening but unfortunately it rained heavily so we didn’t get to see them. Wednesday we were taken up river in a long thin canoe boat with an outboard up the back which was rather exciting. We stopped at a village and then continued on to some more caves – one had no lights as they were out so it was torches only. Would have been fabulous with the lights on but was still pretty good. After seeing two more caves we had a swim in the rather “fresh” river. Then we went on our own jungle walk through a muddy path to a small waterfall at the river and saw giant beehives hanging off the cliff. That evening we went on a night walk but it poured rain just before we went so didn’t see much.

We got up early Thursday morning and went on the canopy treetop walk. This was about 500m long done in sections right up the top of the rainforest and boy some of those trees are hugely tall!!! It was two shoulder high ropes with netting down to two planks and only two people were allowed on each section at a time. It was great and so peaceful though I must say we did start out in trepidation. Delphine pointed out a green viper sitting on a tree. We packed up our gear and checked out the information centre and saw an interesting film on bats and have since become a fan! We arrived back at Miri at 4ish and introduced Delphine to Pacific Express and then went to town for dinner. We had been quite worried about the state of the sea as it had been pretty unsettled.

Friday the 13th (bad luck on two counts!!!) we were going nowhere so went to the market and did our final shop and then to the Banana Leaf restaurant for a fabulous Indian dinner.