Downhill to near sea level, losing all that hard-won ascent, heading for another potential frontier confrontation. Downhill to flatlands, a place where the bike seems to ride all by itself, leaving me free to mind-wander, a chattering inner monologue that flitters randomly across continents of spurious thoughts. Throws out word pairings and collective nouns whilst salivating on a deep-pan pizza.

If winds have Beaufort, ‘quakes have Richter and gravity has Newton, then it has to be time for a new measure for road-hills.

Once that scale had been based on our experiences in Ecuador; post Guatemala, there’s a requirement for re-assessment.

Hence: ‘The Guatador’: an emotional, private equation of questionably cycle-able road gradient, one whose permutation takes into account the stupidity of hauling down filled jackets in the tropics, with a coefficient correction for ‘The Presbyterian Effect’… the purity of the journey that doesn’t allow for a cop-out by taking the wimp’s bus uphill.

‘The Guatador Graduation’, should only be activated when the ‘Nederland Naughts’ which measures flatscapes, and the more realistic, comfortable, manageable ‘Peruvian Par’ are superseded. The latter nation whose  Andean thoroughfares take a more relaxed attitude to acquiring altitudes, a place whose roads have become a benchmark for what I consider excellence in mountain highway engineering.

Still ‘mind-wandering’, we cross into El Salvador, to find flat country roads that all, without exception, come with wide shoulders. On occasions our domain on the outer edge is in an infinitely better condition than the main carriageway. The only true hazards being the competition for shade, competing with wayward herds of cows, cyclists hauling wide loads, drying maize corn and assorted jerrycans awaiting the diesel truck. Still, the kilometres slip easily into the past, and we’ve got many leagues of this ease to come.

There is a shadow looming on the horizon, further down the coast: Costa Rica, a nation that comes with volcanic mountains. Will my new found ‘Scale’ require further adaptation, requiring the addition of a prefix, creating ‘The Costa Guatador’?