Day 48: More Caving

Slept reasonably well in the dorm. I'm still paranoid about my snoring in an environment like that, though I don't think I would've disturbed anyone last night - of the 20 beds in the dorm only 4 were occupied! One guy was way over in the other partition, and although another was only a few beds away he came in very late and was snoring loudly when I woke up due to a rainstorm around 2am, so stuff him.

Breakfast of pancakes at the park cafe before joining our next group for this morning's cave tour: Clearwater Cave and Cave of the Winds. These caves are a bit more of an adventure, since they're accessed only by small motorised canoes. So we clambered into our boats and set off up the river, stopping along the way at a traditional longhouse community with a handicraft market. The stuff looked nice but travelling the way we do means that we just can't buy objects.

Back to the boats we got to our first stop at Cave of the Winds. This was the tightest cave we'd been in so far - a couple of almost-squeezes, ups and downs and a few patches of almost total darkness. Though for some reason, the handrails and ambient lighting made me think almost of a Disneyland queue, like you were in an unreal environment. It's called the Cave of the Winds because the narrow passages mean the wind entering at far ends becomes quite strong in places. Interesting stuff.

Further up the river we went, until we got to the final stop: Clearwater Cave. This one is named fairly obviously because it has a very strong, deep river running through it. Despite the immensity of the Deer Cave yesterday, Clearwater Cave is actually much much larger because it has a much longer run, and far more in the way of side-chambers. In fact, Clearwater Cave is believed to be the largest cave system in the world by volume (over 30 million cubic metres), and the 8th longest cave in the world at 215 kilometres (!!!).

Obviously we didn't walk the entire length, we just had a poke around the first several hundred metres! Again lots of amazing geology in here, deep pools and a couple of ceiling cave-ins where you're looking up at rainforest several hundred metres above you. It's hard to actually put in to words sometimes. It's a bit embarrassing, but in these totally alien environments with their timber boardwalks, ladders, twinkling ambient lights, constant dripping and carefully organised spotlights, often times the only reference point I could latch on to was video game environments like World of Warcraft or Skyrim. Some of the sets and environments in those games seem pretty inspired by caves like this, maybe that's why it felt a little familiar?

Outside of Clearwater Cave we had a free hour or so before getting the boat back to the park headquarters which we passed by swimming in the river as it flows out of the cave. It's not stagnant, very clean, and (obviously) very clear water! Though it felt positively icy at about 18 degrees - easily the coldest water we've been in for a long time! A couple of other folk from the tour swam with us and we chatted to them. As it turned out, one of them was an admin assistant for student doctors at Concord Hospital in Sydney, and knew my brother Sean reasonably well! What a small world. Also present was another guy from the dorm (not the snorer), who was a student doctor from Italy about to do a six month placement in Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of Borneo). He wasn't coming back to the park HQ with us though, from here he was doing an overnight hike to see the Pinnacles with a group of other people. We'd considered it, but it looked a bit too intense for the level of gear/fitness we currently have!

Back at the park headquarters we had lunch with our new friends (this lady plus a very well travelled 50-something English lady here on her own). No organised tours for the afternoon so we decided to hike out to a waterfall about 3km distant for another swim, since the weather seemed to be holding up nicely. The first half of the hike was on the boardwalk from yesterday and was very easy going, but the second half was in a rainforest/jungle trail which was extremely muddy in places. Thongs maybe weren't the right choice!

Made it out to the waterfall but it wasn't quite as impressive as we'd hoped, particularly after the ones we'd seen in the Northern Territory. Again the water was clear and cold, but we didn't stay in the water that long as the bottom was quite soft and muddy, plus the fish kept nipping at my feet! Sneaky buggers. Back to the park HQ we tramped and headed straight outside the gates to the cheap bar and had a couple of well-earned beers. It had been a pretty intense day of walking and climbing stairs in particular.

Back to the dorm after dinner which had filled up a bit - the snorer from last night and the Italian student doctor had both left, and been replaced by a pair of German girls and a quartet of Japanese guys who looked like they'd just come back from an overnight hike. We're booked on a 7am canopy walk tomorrow and our flight's at 10am, so our alarm was on for 6:20am as we needed to pack up before the walk. Annoyingly, the Japanese guys who'd been sleeping all afternoon suddenly decided at 10pm that it was the perfect time to organise all their bags, have showers and get ready for bed. After everyone else is asleep of course. Jerks! I'll get my own back at 6am.Læs mere