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A 40 minute flight from Miri took us to an airstrip in the jungle in Gunung Mulu National Park. We cradled our collective carbon footprint guilt, but the alternative was a 12 hour ride up the Bantang Baram & Tutoh rivers below. Oh well, chuck another dolphin on the barbie...
A Rajah Brooke birdwing butterfly in the airport terminal... about 5 inches across, we were to see quite a few of these beauties in and around Mulu...
We were also greeted by signs advising us what we couldn't hunt, keep, sell or eat! Otters' nipple chips anyone?
Fish in one of the ponds outside the room...
Many of the local trees and plants have medicinal use; the Akka Benggong has a particularly romantic use...
Some of the other plants were less inviting to rub on a ripe boil... fortunately Ratan below has many other uses though...
Shabby photographs of a Dragon Tail butterfly in the drain outside our accommodation. There were a pair, but they wouldn't stay still enough to get a decent shot...
Lantern bugs...
With all these tasty bugs about...
Deer Cave - home to 2-3 million wrinkle-lipped bats by day and thousands of swallows by night...
Strange plants near the entrance...
Abraham Lincoln profile showing as we got deeper in...
Inside the cave was huge...
Cockroaches patrolling the bat guano for tasty morsels... there were dead/dying bats on there too...
At the other end of the cave, the Garden of Eden entrance...
As dusk fell, the bats emerge in groups of several thousand looking to dodge the attention of hawks that gather each evening to hunt them...
They head to the forest to feed on 15 tonnes of insects every night...
Lang's Cave
Not so many bats, but plenty of stalactites, stalagmites and pillars...
The slow process of pillar formation...
The thin sticky strands are traps set by glow worms to catch their prey...
Back outside... Mr Snail makes an entrance - it was bigger than it looks here (honest)...
Gecko... these little chaps have a barking call and we had one in every room we stayed in...
