This is a story about how the nature of a journey can change quickly and for reasons we can't control. But before we get to those dramatic events, there is a little more routine travelling needed to set the scene. When we finally got into Oaxaca we found a good location for a little administration that was needed before we disappeared into Guatemala. Experience has taught us that it is best to arrive at a border with all the necessary copies of passports, licences and bike registration ready to go. At the small crossings, a photocopier might not be available. At the big crossings, the search to find the man with the copy machine will certainly lose you a place in the line, or the melee as the case may be.

Oaxaca is a big city with an historic centre of note and a handful of worthwhile tourist attractions around the Centro Historico. It was abuzz with tourists and tourist trade. This was the first time we had encountered a noticeable number of foreigners on our Mexican journey and, unsurprisingly, it made us both feel a little uncomfortable. We completed our administration as quickly as possible and used the remaining time to see the sights but we were happy enough to restrict our visit to two nights.

From Oaxaca, we planned to take two days to close up on the Guatemalan border so that we could cross early on a normal working day. We had also selected a minor crossing in the mountains rather than the border gate on the south coast where the sticky temperatures and crush of traffic would be liable to leave the border officers grumpy.

The first part of the plan went well. We cruised down from the highlands on Mex 190 one of the best sweeper roads we have ridden (anywhere) with hundreds of bends of excellent radius, a good surface and not a hairpin to be found. We stopped at Jalapa for fuel and an artificial coffee. It was there we met Oscar on his low slung Harley returning from a journey to the borderlands. Oscar explained that the winds were bad on the coastal plain to the east and that we should take care.

We exchanged contacts with Oscar and pressed on. The wind got stronger but we have had many high wind experiences. On one notable occasion on the motorway south of Glasgow in the UK it was blowing so hard we were being pushed across the lane with the back wheel spinning and the bike sliding at more than 120km/h. It was scary stuff. Surely southern Mexico couldn't be that bad.

As we pressed on the wind strength increased and I found myself trying to remember the observations needed to grade a gale on the Beaufort Scale. There were, of course, signs that things were going to get rough. The name of a town in centre of the plain, La Ventosa, should have been a clue. The forest of giant wind turbines, hundreds strong and facing defiantly into the gale, was certainly another. But the real give away, the one that should have given us alarm, was the sight of those hundreds of behemoth turbines with their huge wings stationary. Wind turbines, even these monsters, stop operating when the wind strength is strong enough to cause damage.

Of course, it would be hard to image a worse bike than Elephant to ride in a cross wind. High and slab-sided, Elephant has the aerodynamics of a barn door. To make matters worse, I hadn't refuelled in Jalapa and Elephant carried only half of the usual 30L. An extra 15kg of weight over the front wheel would have been very handy about then.

We pressed on into the mid-afternoon, both of us sitting as far forward and as low as we could, my recovering shoulder aching, calculating the kilometres until we reached the cover of the mountains off to the east. After several hours of this, I found a bridge that might provide some protection and pulled over to let my shoulder recover a little. We climbed off the bike and sat on the bridge foundation but when a strong gust threatened to lift Elephant off the side-stand and topple it over, we settled to lean on the bike instead.

An hour later there was enough strength in my shoulder to press on. We kept the speed between 60 and 80km/h, kept our weight well forward and tried not to gasp into the intercom every time a new gust slammed into us. We eventually ran out of light still 100km short of our destination and were fortunate to find a cheap roadside hotel to lick our wounds.

The next morning we pressed on with the wind just as bad, then turned north into the mountains at the town of Arriaga. We climbed into the mountains on the “old” road leaving the exposed “new” toll road to vehicles weighing more than a tonne, and finally found some still air near the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez. We pressed on into the foggy mountains climbing to nearly 2000m and settled for the night in the town of Comitán close to the Guatemalan frontier.

The next day we rode into Guatemala and the start of Team Elephant's Central American travels but it still took us a couple of days to find the time to discover what had happened to us on the plains around La Ventosa. When we go to it, a little research was quickly rewarded. These winds, we discovered, have a name: The Tehuano Wind Event (“Tehuantepecer”). The Event occurs once or twice each winter when the ice cold air sweeps down from the Arctic, through central Canada, down through the Heartland of the USA and into the Gulf of Mexico. The cold air sweeps across the sea and hits southern Mexico at the place where the isthmus is narrowest, then crosses the country to the Pacific Coast thought a gap in the Sierra Madre (Chivela Pass).

Those with a scientific bent will also note some interesting physics. As the air flow is channelled through the mountain valleys, the Benoulli effect accelerates the airflow and lowers its pressure (the same principle that provides the lift to an aeroplane wing). So, between Daniel Benoulli and those pesky Canadians, bike riders on Mex 200 get a pasting once every now and then. November 27 and 28, 2013, the days we rode through, were the most recent event.

This link http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/?s=tehuano will take the idly curious to a satellite video clip showing the winds howling through the mountains and a short explanation of the phenomenon. Unfortunately, the image doesn't have the clarity to show a battered Team Elephant struggling east along Mex 200. In the meantime, Team Elephant is back in Mexico and in good shape but looking forward to a short Christmas holiday just up the road a little way.