Return to Borneo - Day 7

TO THE BATCAVE

As some of you may know I have a fear of cockroaches. It dates back 7 years to when I had a bad cockroach experience in a Singapore hotel. One of the stops on our tour is the Gomantong Caves, home to thousands upon thousands of roaches, making today a 'Fear Factor' sort of day for me. Along with Rose and Jane & Roger we met up with Stefan & Caroline from Sweden and another guide called Maria for our trip to Sukau on the Kinabatangan River, via the caves.

It was incredibly hot walking the path to the caves, but the great wildlife kept our minds off it. We were especially thrilled when we spotted some Maroon Langurs (monkeys) in the trees above us. Then it was time to face my fears as we went in to explore the main cave. They visited this cave on The Amazing Race and I remember thinking it looked very impressive. It is! Little birds called swiflets make their nests in the caves and the harvesting of the nests is big business. The caves are also home to hundreds of bats. A plankwalk leads around the cave as in the centre the guano is very deep and positively crawling with little roaches. Big roaches cling to the cave walls. In the deep, dark parts of the cave the plankwalk and handrails are also fully covered in guano and roaches. For a girl with a fear like mine it's not the place to be. But guess what? I had no roach issues whatsoever, and it seems I have no fear after all. My biggest concern was of falling over - we all know I have issues with staying upright and the guano made things very slippery. At one point deep in the cave there was a steep uphill. Trying to get up there without falling, and without touching the guano and roach covered handrail, was quite a challenge. I was quite proud I made it up with only using the handrail once. As we did not pay the fee to use cameras there are unfortunately no photos of me with the roaches.

We made it to our accommodation, the Sukau River Lodge, just before lunch. This place is fantastic! If you're interested in wildlife this is the perfect place to be, and a number of tour companies operate similar lodges. At 3:30 we headed out on our first boat trip to view the wildlife. The highlight of a trip to this area is the Proboscis Monkey. I knew this was the best place to come to see them but I had no idea we'd see so many! We spotted some almost immediately as we turned off the main river, but they were hard to see as they were a bit back in the trees. It started raining at this point, so we all got to look really silly sitting there in our emergency ponchos. We continued down the river for an hour of so spotting birds, lizards and plenty of long-tailed macaques (really common monkeys in SE Asia). It was nice, but the best part of the trip was the journey back. The monkeys come to the riverside to settle for the night and as we made our way back we encountered groups of macaques and proboscis monkeys everywhere. Proboscis monkeys are incredibly odd looking with little beady eyes and pot-bellies. The big males have massive noses, while the females have upturned ones. They move through the trees in a hilariously clumsy way, and you can hear them crashing about from quite a distance. While we were watching one entertaining group a boat containing a group of middle aged French people staying at our lodge pulled up next to us. Every time one of the monkeys made a clumsy jump all the French people would exclaim, 'Ooh la la!'. I'm sure you had to be there but let me assure you that it was simply hilarious!

Given my history we all knew I was bound to fall over eventually, and that my joy at staying upright in the cave would be short-lived. Plankwalks connect all the buildings at the lodge and walking back to our room after the boat trip they were slippery. As I was pointing some giant ants out to Shanon my feet gave way and I came crashing down on top of them. But it's OK as it didn't hurt at all, no ants were harmed, and Shanon was thoroughly entertained. I have now fallen over in at least 4 different countries.

After dinner Shanon joined some of the others for a night walk and had a great time spotting lots of scorpions and all sorts of creepy crawlies.