It's amazing what a little sunshine can do

I should not be able to complain about the weather here. For all of the gross cloudy, rainy days occasionally we have some nice warm sunny days, even in January, and sometimes they are on the weekend. Sometimes, two weekends in a row.
Yesterday I woke Colin up before he was ready because the light flooding into my room was the strongest since summer. We went for a run, made breakfast and went out to explore the parts of Ilan that are no fun in the rain. We headed out to Datong, an aboriginal area noted for hikes and tea. It took nearly 40 minutes by scooter and normally I would have complained about that too, but the air was crisp and clean and I started to think I could live in Taiwan forever.
I wasn't really sure where we were going and thought we might be able to hike up to one of the tea farms. We ended up hiking along a creek on the most substantial hike I have yet to find in Taiwan, it took us at least an hour and a half one way, though the first quarter was, as I have come to find typical more of a service road than a hike. We got past that part and risked sliding off the mossy rock path into the river several times, but were rewarded in the end with a waterfall and a trail that just ends.
By the time we returned to the trail head we were quite hungry, but I was insistant that we find the tea garden on the mountain. It took several tries, but soon we were under a tent in a field of tea plants with a pot of tea and some overly expensive bad food. The view was postcard perfect, we could see the whole county and as the clouds began to roll in we saw the Datong rivervalley bathed in streaks of light that reminded me more of American landscape paintings more than anything else.