Strawberries, boats and raindrops.

Over the Christmas weekend Cliff and I went on a weekend trip to the Sun Moon Lake. We both worked on Christmas eve and day, so I was super keen to do something fun over the weekend. We could have caught a train and a bus to get to the lake, we did the slightly more adventurous thing and scootered over there. It is about 160km - and in South Africa terms not very far. But on our little scooters bumbling along the windy country roads it was quite an adventure.

We stopped at a strawberry farm along the way and picked ourselves some berries. They have these cunning little pickin carts that the hard core pickers can use.

We had some fun times with the "Scooter Gangs" we encountered along the way. These guys are sweet! They pimp their rides, and often have matching gear to their steeds. Something the couples do here is have matching helmets and jackets - which sort of runs parallel to the matching weekend tracksuit phenomenon often sighted in East Rand Mall. In fact I sure that could be a thesis or something.

Anyway, we had the opportunity to 'ride with the boys' along the way as they passed us (at which point we latched on the back and just cruised the hills in out LAME rain gear) My favorite scooter I saw was painted like a sharks mouth at the back where the wheel/suspension/mud flap is, it had teeth and blood and everything.

This is a amazing highway interchange we saw along the way. The more I looked at it the crazier it seemed to me. The three highways join in this valley with a wide river basin, and they have just taken the whole road system and hung it in the air!

This picture and video were taken at a pagoda on the hills next to the Sun Moon lake. We couldn't go up the pagoda because it was "destroyed" by an earthquake. Seemed to us to be very much still there - but maybe just damaged and they don't want any tourists squashed if it decides to fall over.

You can see the lake in the back round behind Cliff. It was clear in the morning but always got hazy as the day got on.

Peace people: Taiwan style!

These are some floating flower beds. I think the idea for this actually comes from the native/aboriginal people who live on or near the lake. They make square bamboo rafts and float them on the lake with earth on top of them, and then they use them to grow food on. Its really clever because it also absorbs some of the wave energy and protects their floating homes. Its a weird concept to have floating fields...

This is a display of a traditional (or at least historical) dock with boats. They had these glowing lanterns to go along with it too.

This is a life saving device for the famed Sun Moon Lake creature. It has a sweet tooth for fruit loops (sugar coat cereal delicacy) and this is used to lure the creature to safety.

Looking happy and at peace with the world. It is such a good feeling going up and down a valley pass with winding roads on a two wheel vehicle - it is so different to being in a car. You get the wind and smells and sometimes tastes of the open roads that make it much more interesting experience.

However....

Shortly after this photo was taken it got much darker, colder and wetter.

And that is when the good warm fuzzy feeling vanished.

This is when being on two wheel is not AS much fun as being inside a comfy bubble of a car, and over two hours of driving in the cold dark wet night was the very graceful end to an exciting weekend.

We were short of some waterproof clothes, so Cliff used some rubbish bags! I could hear him flapping way back behind him on the road, but they seemed to do the trick. Not to mention adding to the overall style of his giddup.

We hired ourselves a little row boat and went to water, and the above is a little taste of our sea adventure. Thanks for reading - and I hope you all had a swell Christmas, and New Year!

Cheers, Tim