Gomantong Caves, Kinabatangan River

We woke up early & Hadi had a surprise for us. He walked us to the beach & let us each hand release a hatchling turtle. Unfortunately Hadi didn’t fully press the video recording button on the iPhone, but it was a cool experience just the same. We boated back to Sandakan. This time, we were in 6-8 foot seas, so it was a little “bouncy”... Hadi drove us to Gomantong caves, where we walked along a boardwalk through the rainforest (jungle) in a light rain towards the cave entrance looking for signs of primates, native birds or insects. We did see some butterflies & a Pygmy squirrel which was about the size of our thumb. It was impossible to get a decent pic of that little guy! An orangutan was spotted in the cave yesterday escaping the rain, but we weren’t so lucky today. The cave is famous for having millions of swiftlets & bats. We saw millions of swiflet nests which are harvested 4 times a year by locals to sell to the Chinese who use them to make Birds Nest Soup. Hadi told us that depending on the quality of the nest, it can fetch up to 3000 ringget an ounce, or about $1000 Cdn. The nests are made of swiftlet saliva, & their own feathers (black swiftlets) & just swiftlet spit by white swiftlets, which is more sought after. The cave was also home to billions of cockroaches, spiders, & poisonous centipedes that were quite big! We walked on a boardwalk around the cave perimeter. In the middle was tons of guano, which is left there so that the scent will attract the swiftlets back to the cave. Next, we drove to a small dock to take a 5 min boat ride to our accommodation, which was also the take off point for our 2 hour river cruise. We saw a couple of crocodiles, one over 10’ long, lots of long tailed macaque monkeys, several silvered langur monkeys, & lots of proboscus monkeys in the trees lining the river. Several species of birds, including egrets, purple herons, and kingfishers flew around us.Read more