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Here I am in the southern hemisphere for the first time, where the kindness of the people is familiar. A similar familiarity to growing up in the small town of Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, population 13,000 on Lake Ontario. Back in the day when neighbors borrowed eggs and the kids played in the street until the street lights came on. The simple safety of it all is still lived daily by the Maori people in Hicks Bay, North Island, New Zealand. The folks here invite strangers in for tea and a bed to sleep in. With a strong belief in family secular and extended, they take care of each other and the strangers they meet along the way.

The Henare and Joyce Akuhaia-Brown Maori family invited me in for tea this afternoon. They introduced themselves and their home. Joyce told me she had named their home Shalom which means peace in Hebrew because she felt it was a beautiful word that said so much. They laughed when they told me that the origin of the addition of the word Brown to their name was unknown. This was only the beginning of how much they were to teach me about the Maori culture.

The land along the pacific east coast of the north island, NZ is Maori owned and cultivated. Family trusts own large acreages of land that stretch for miles upon miles. The Akuhaia-Brown clan has a long standing history of attracting strays like me. Although, I was the first women travelling alone on a bicycle they have ever had in for tea. Other new comers, tourists and strays have stumbled upon them and stayed for days, a few stayed for years. People stay as long as they need to or want to and the lessons and knowledge exchanged are always welcomed as a gift of spirit.

The deeply spiritual Maori clan has been living by this patch of sea since the start of the known history of New Zealand. Henare laughed that some history books claim that the explorer Captain James Cook is said to have discovered NZ because the Maori people were already living here. New Zealand translated literally from the Maori language means land beneath the clouds. That is how it is believed that NZ was discovered to begin with. It is said by most boaters that a cloud always hangs over NZ which is a great beacon to those looking for land from sea.

Joyce traces back the Maori language to perhaps a linguistic similarity to the Polynesian languages of Hawaii. Kia Ora is a great Maori word which means Hello/Good Luck/Good Health all at the same time. As we sat together at a round table drinking tea many different cousins and aunties came to join us, sharing a little bit more of their Maori ancestry. Many stories were told about living from the plentiful sea and about positive choices made throughout the years.

The Maori people have faced many of the same challenges of the indigenous people throughout the globe. Land and culture has been taken away by the predominant government only to be renegotiated and maybe given back at a later date. The Maori people have assimilated courageously and with great grace holding on to a rich strong history while moving forward into a healthy modern existence. The Maori language is taught in schools and the Maori people have a loud voice in government. Maori culture and language are woven within the mainstream. Town names, road signs and architecture influences are found throughout New Zealand. I sat drinking my tea immersed in the amount of knowledge, wisdom and beautiful passion the group possessed about their heritage and life by the sea.

After tea, I was invited to spend the night, they said the southerlies were going to blow and to stay inside their house and not outside in my tent. I was trying to politely decline the generous offer but I knew that Henare and Joyce had the instinctual inside scoop you might say on the weather. Within the hour, the southerly winds kicked up and if that little tent of mine had been outside it would have definitely been blown out to sea.

The wind was blowing with such velocity that entire trees were swooping over as if they were tiny blades of grass. The noise of the storm against the house made sleeping a bit of a challenge. I eventually drifted off full of gratitude to the Akuhaia-Brown clan for bringing me in and sharing so much of their Maori culture and home with me. I was sad to leave the next morning although this passed as I turned my bicycle down a sharp turn in the hilly ocean road on the way to Saint Mary’s, the Maori church in Tikitiki.

Even though I am a small woman, I have never been attracted to small men, and so countries where the men, though often strikingly beautiful from an aesthetic perspective, had more delicate bones than even I did, didn’t quite tempt me. In Mongolia, I couldn’t help but watch them, their bodies toughened from hard living and tumbling with their horses all day, with more than just a small degree of appreciation. Sometimes it could get downright distracting.

It didn’t help matters any that Mongolian men were outrageously flirtatious. My new friend that had arrived by motorcycle ambled towards me, and jokingly elbowed me in the side, My breath caught in my chest. I was grateful my cheeks were wind burned enough that the man would not notice me blushing. Fortunately for me, he bent down lower, pushing me into his armpit and I picked up his scent. He smelled funny, the way most Mongolians smelled funny to me, a sour scent I attributed to years spent working around horses and a diet that consisted almost exclusively of Tolvin, a Mongol staple, which is essentially anything you can make with flour and mutton and the occasional carrot. I thought that the “vodka problem”, a direct translation from Mongolian, that some Mongolians seemed to have may have also contributed. On more than one occasion, the scent had saved me, kept me from acting like a complete and utter spaz because otherwise the men were pretty damned hot.

And with a ear to ear grin a woman emerging from the place where the Mongolian hotty had parked the motorcycle. She raced up towards me, laughing and placed a water bottle in my hand. Sain Bainuu/Hello,how are you I said in Mongolian, smiling and took the first sip. Then I reached into my pocket, pulled out some bells, and handed them to the old woman. Bells I had purchased from the market in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city. The bells are used as buttons on the Mongolian traditional coat called deel in the Mongolian language. A brilliant coat that serves as blanket, tent, pocket and travel bag when need be. Mongolians travel for days with nothing more then the belongings transported within their coat, one coat for summer and a warmer version for winter. The Mongolian people I have met are the most practical travelers I have met since beginning this cycling journey almost 7000 peddle miles and 9 countries ago. Not surprising given there nomadic roots.

The hum of a distant motorbike startled me out of my meditative daze. I have not seen another person in over a week, and have become accustomed to the long lulling silence, punctuated only by the sound of my bicycle cutting though the wind. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with my shirt sleeve and formulated a plan. I had been pedaling for hours and didn’t think I could manage the degree of animation I would need to play the cat and mouse chase game motorcyclists sometime play with me on the road, so I made my way over to the side of the trail where I had noticed an ovum.

I lay my bicycle down and walked a few steps into the desert, to check out the ovum, an oval shaped shrine piled high with rocks, swatches of bright colored silk, hard candy and old Mongolian money. Ovums can be Buddhist or shamanic in nature and they mark sacred spots. They are erected yearly and always added to therefore there are lots of Ovums to be honored throughout Mongolia. I fought the urge to run around the shrine three times. This was a habit I had picked up along the way, another event that marked the days on my spiritual obstacle course, and was generally followed up with a bite of a Snickers bar and the chugging of a half liter of water. I am pretty sure that ovum running is not a registered Olympic sport anywhere but it is practiced throughout Mongolia.

I suspected the Mongols on the motorcycle would be greatly amused and understanding if they caught me at my little game. I imagined tales would be told about me over bowls of vodka—how the crazy foreign girl on a bicycle with the crispy red cheeks and electrocuted hair ran around their shrine like her feet were on fire in her strange imported rubber cycling sandals. I resisted the urge to three-peat the running in circles event. Instead I walked over to my pannier/bikebag and pulled a Snickers bar and pulled out some of the jingly bells I had bought in Laos. I walked back to the ovum and buried the bells in a dark crevice between two rocks. I heard the motorcycle slow behind me, and then stop. Smoothly, I turned, and, with a huge smile plastered on my face, greeted my newest friends.

With an ear to ear grin and a big ole nod a man jumped off his motorbike, then he took my hand and pumped my arm furiously. Hand shaking is not native to Mongolian culture but has been learned from the Russians. Many Mongolians shake hands hello, after a shared laugh and while saying good-bye as well. It is quite the work out. I had tensed my arm a second to late and so I just stared at him, the golden glow of his skin and his weather scarred cheeks. Hesitantly, I looked at his eyes. They were, as I suspected, distinctly Mongolian eyes; brown and raw souled, so unguarded and honest it made it difficult to stare at them for too long. I looked at the dirt streaking his clothes and face, and smiled inside. It was such a relief to be around people as oh natural as I am. The Mongolian sense of practicality and necessity jived with mine; the polar opposite to the ultra clean little Chinese men, just over 1000 km behind who scurried off to wash their hands every time they touched my bicycle.