Deer Cave - so called because deer used to come a drink here; "but not anymore, because of all the tourists" - is the second biggest cave in the world, after one recently discovered in Vietnam. Some of the guides at Mulu still refer to it as the largest and proudly tell us of the time they met David Attenborough, when the cave was featured on the Planet Earth series.
We walk into the cave for about 5 minutes before turning around to look at the silhouette of a face, formed in a rock in the cave entrance. The cave is big. Really, really big. We spend over an hour in it. We walk along board walks past pools which are home to fish, turned blind and colourless from the dark and up steps over mounds of bat 'guano' (the technical term). My torch light shows the mounds to be teaming with insects - crickets, centipedes, cockroaches. My light doesn't reach to the roof of the cave but I can here the the million bats above, chattering away to each other.
In the evening, between five and six thirty, all three million bats fly out of Deer Cave to eat fruit and insects. The park as set up a seating area outside the cave and by the time we arrive there are already about fifty other people waiting for the bats. It takes about an hour, when it is almost dark, for the bats to arrive. I had been expecting all three million bats to fly out of the cave at once, with deafening screeches, blacking out the sky, Ride of the Valkyries playing in the back-ground. Instead they come out in 'small' bursts, of what is probably thousands at a time, appearing as small swirls of black. They are visible only as they hit the skyline, making the hillside look like it's smoking as they waft higher in a spiral (to confuse the waiting hawks) before disappearing over the jungle). Between the exclamations of the other tourists I can hear their wings flapping. Despite the lack of dramatic music it is still amazing.
We walk into the cave for about 5 minutes before turning around to look at the silhouette of a face, formed in a rock in the cave entrance. The cave is big. Really, really big. We spend over an hour in it. We walk along board walks past pools which are home to fish, turned blind and colourless from the dark and up steps over mounds of bat 'guano' (the technical term). My torch light shows the mounds to be teaming with insects - crickets, centipedes, cockroaches. My light doesn't reach to the roof of the cave but I can here the the million bats above, chattering away to each other.
In the evening, between five and six thirty, all three million bats fly out of Deer Cave to eat fruit and insects. The park as set up a seating area outside the cave and by the time we arrive there are already about fifty other people waiting for the bats. It takes about an hour, when it is almost dark, for the bats to arrive. I had been expecting all three million bats to fly out of the cave at once, with deafening screeches, blacking out the sky, Ride of the Valkyries playing in the back-ground. Instead they come out in 'small' bursts, of what is probably thousands at a time, appearing as small swirls of black. They are visible only as they hit the skyline, making the hillside look like it's smoking as they waft higher in a spiral (to confuse the waiting hawks) before disappearing over the jungle). Between the exclamations of the other tourists I can hear their wings flapping. Despite the lack of dramatic music it is still amazing.
No comments:
Post a Comment