Camp 5 / Mulu National Park

Camp 5 is where you sleep if you're going to climb the Pinnacles, a dangerous but reportedly breathtaking "forest" of pointy rocks jutting into the sky. The climb is quite difficult (there are ladders and ropes!) and takes four hours each way -- if you are in good shape. I did not attempt it. You must carry all your water and food with you, and by the time you reach the top, it will be very hot. Then you have to climb down, which is reportedly even harder. Ange and Julie left at 7 a.m. and came back at 4 p.m. (They did well!) From Camp 5, you could also hike another 11 km on the Headhunters' Trail to Lubang Cina. I sat around and enjoyed the river and surrounding limestone cliffs.

One of the clear differences between our group's arrangement with our guide and the park and the arrangements for independent travelers (who are also required to hire a guide) was food. We saw some other groups eating instant noodles at every meal, while we were served lovely chicken, vegetables, eggs, toast and even pancakes, all prepared for us by our guide, Matthew. It was raining when we left Camp 5, and so the people who had come in the day before could not climb to the Pinnacles. They decided to stay another night in the hope that they would have dry weather the next morning. As we were leaving, they asked if we had any spare food to leave with them!

Walking the 8 km in the rain was actually better than the trek in, when I was reminded of Anthony Burgess's description of an Englishman in Malaysia "scooping" sweat off his face. The amount of sweat that pours out of your skin in the jungle defies belief. We sweat a lot back home in Florida, but the jungle is something else. The leeches were not as pesky in the rain. After the trek in, I found three fat, happy leeches on my legs. A touch of soap in the shower and they promptly fell off. (Only one bite bled a lot; leeches secrete an anti-coagulant into you). On the rainy trek out, I caught a few tiny leeches before they latched on to me and flicked them into the bush. None stuck on.

After we got back to the park headquarters that day, we went to two more caves and saw the bats.