Strike at the airline

Today, we were supposed to fly up to Puerto Iguazu. We were really looking forward to it, so we were filled with anticipation as we arrived at the airport. After standing in line for half an hour at the check-in counter, we were informed that our flight was canceled due to a strike by the pilots. WHY couldn’t they just tell us right away instead of waiting until each traveler finally got to the counter to break the news? There was nothing we could do since the other airlines were fully booked, so we had to stand in line for another hour to get our money refunded. The airport was a complete mess, with half of all departures canceled, creating a line that stretched from one end of the terminal to the other with people all trying to get their refunds. Several news stations were there filming the chaos and wanted to interview travelers. Honny almost made it on TV, but since the journalist didn’t speak English, he had to keep looking for Spanish-speaking travelers :o) Feeling totally down, we needed to figure out a solution to our problem. It’s quite a trek to the waterfall, and you can’t just hop on a bus. We decided to flip our travel plans upside down. We had originally planned to fly there and take the bus back to Buenos Aires. Since the journey is so long, we wanted to break up the return trip, so we took the first leg of about 12 hours to Rosario, stay there for a few days, and then take the final 4-hour stretch to Buenos Aires. Now we had to take the bus to Rosario, but when we finally arrived in the city, we realized it would actually take 20 hours before we would be at Puerto Iguazu. Lonely Planet really struggles with providing accurate travel times... So we had to catch the next bus to Santa Fe that same evening, since it was "only" about 16 hours from there. We didn’t get to see anything of Rosario, which is supposed to be the perfect Argentine city, but we’d rather see the waterfall, so off we went on the bus. Finally, we arrived in Santa Fe where we spent the night. We got there so late that we ended up having a midnight dinner. But it wasn’t bad at all. The restaurant had a wine deal: buy a large bottle and get a small one for free for just 13 pesos. What a great way to end a loooong day with some nice red wine :o)