La Rioja - Tucuman

This "leg" was about 381km, but I did it by bus. Why? Well, it's all pretty flat in between so it makes for pretty dull cycling and I didn't really see the point of wasting time and money stopping in towns that I didn't really want to see. I did plenty of that in Chile and while sometimes it was fun other times it was anything but (see Arauco), so I decided to take the easy route and take the bus. I use the word "easy" in the losest way possible mind, getting Toops and all my bags onto and off a bus is by no means simple and usually involves taking the wheels off, paying excess baggage fees (yes, on buses...), slipping the baggage assistants a few pesos so that I don't have to pay as much in excess baggage fees as I would have to if they stuck to the letter of the law and keeping my fingers crossed for the duration of the trip so that a wayward bag doesn't come down crashing on the bike or wheels.

Yes, I know, that's still a breeze compared to cycling 380km, but with a 2600m climb coming up this week (the Andes one was 2200m) I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.