Not a lot to write about my day off in Chilecito, apart from, I do what any cyclist would do. I wash my cycling clothes in the room wash basin, hang them out to dry upon the balcony and do some bike maintainance.

I have a problem. The rear derailuer won't line up the chain with the sprocket as it should do, when changing gear. When shifting gear to a smaller rear-sprocket, I shift the gear-lever one shift clicking down, but nothing happens until I shift a second click down, whereupon it drops down onto the next sprocket, immediately though the chain starts jumping off and on the sprocket making a bungling metalic grind, until, remedied by shifting the gear-lever back up one, the chain settles on the sprocket.

I don't succeed in remedying it. Having checked both the gear-cable and cable-adjuster, there isn't any problem there. I think it's a worn jocket-wheel on the deraileur. It's more an annoyance than a major mechanical. I should be able to find spare jocket-wheels in the big bike-shop in Mendoza, when I get there.

The last time here I stayed in a hostel full of apmosphere. This Hotel Ruta40 on the other hand is soulless.

A 1960s concrete block on a busy street, the traffic noise invading the room with the balcony window open. The bed is saggy and of coarse there's no kitchen. Eating out is expensive. The three or four restaurants round the plaza a block away, serve the usual Argentine fare that is no longer inspiring. Lunch was empanadas, which would've been good if they were oven baked, but they were deep fried. Dinner, pizza, nothing special. Either that or "lomito en sandwich" (steak sandwich).

Just to add, there was another cyclist here when I arrived Friday. A young Frenchman who left this morning, riding south on route 40. Staying in Hotel Ruta40, part of the legend and mith that surrounds the great north-south highway. Perhaps, Agentina's equivalent of Route 66.