Day 7 Trekking to Camp 5

Overnight In Kota Kinabalu, in a room barely bigger than the bed!, Indeed, the “wall” between the bathroom and bedroom was glass, so it felt bigger!  Then a flight to Miru, than another to Mulu, or destination.  Mulu National Park is the darling of Borneo.  Recently designated a World Heritage Site.  They have poured money into the park to get it up to demanded standing to maintain that designation.  They have done a great job in interpretation.  However, our destination is quite off the beaten path and still quite primitive.

Upon landing in Mulu, we were expecting to check into the Mulu Resort for one night, then start our trekking the following day.  Indeed, our host informs us at the airport that we were starting our trek today, and the night in the Resort at the end our our stay.  That’s fine, except since we can only take a small backpack with us on the trek, we had to go through our rolling duffels in the airport to separate out what we could put on our backs.  Once that was over, we are hauled first by van, then by long boat up a river to the drop off point for the trek.  Then a 9km, 6 mile hike through the jungle to our destination.

Our guide stayed with us since the trail was blocked in several areas by fallen trees.  When the afternoon torrential rains started, the ponchos came out and we kept trudging through the ankle deep water on the trail.  Even though it was early afternoon, with the depth of the jungle, and rain, it felt like dusk.  Half the way to our destination, we heard this tremendous crack, and having lived in the mountains of California, we instantly realized a tree was coming down.  In watching our guide, he wasn’t running, so we stayed close to him.  After the tree came crashing to the ground, he thought it had dropped about 20 meters away, (60 feet).  That’s close.  Below is our home for two days, in the dorm with a mosquito net.

We got to Camp 5 around 5pm, the 9km took 3 hours to slosh thru.  There, we met a new group of trekkers.  A couple from Switzerland, and a father/daughter due from Kuala Lumpur, native Malaysians.  He is retired and loves to talk, she is a Geology major at the University in Miri and very quite.   Both are Muslin.  Couldn’t really tell he was, but Florita worn the traditional head covering.  Both very nice.  We were briefed a bit about our trek to the Pinnacles that night, little did we expect what we would encounter the next day.