Handling a Travel Crisis in Argentina

One of the things that worth monitoring while traveling is the domestic situation in the region/area you are traveling. After smoothly traveling in Central and South America for 11 days, I bumped into something that interrupted my plan - a strike.

Argentina’s biggest trade union federation initiated a general strike on May 9, 2024 to protest the government’s austerity measures. All the government related service, including National Airline flights were cancelled, which means my original plan to see the glacier in El Calafate and climb The Mount Fitz Roy in El Chalten couldn’t come to realization anymore 🥲

My original plan:

My modified plan:

Handle the unexpected, including losses due to currency fluctuations

Thanks for Civitatis (the platform that I booked shuttle pickup service and the one who sent a message to ask if I needed to adjust the itinerary in advance because of the strike), I was able to start early to cancel everything and ask for a refund in terms of the following services:

1. Flight - Buenos Aires <> El Calafate

2. Shuttle Pickup - from the airport to El Calafate downtown (round trip)

3. Bus Pickup - from El Calafate to El Chaltén (round trip)

4. Hotels in El Calfate and El Chalten

2️⃣ is booked via Civitatis, and I was able to cancel online and ask for a full refund without any issue. Even though I haven’t used services on Civitatis since then, I do consider using them in the future since they took proactive actions when the strike happened; 3️⃣ is booked via Busbud, I could get almost full refund because they don’t refund the tax portion; 4️⃣ is booked on Booking.com. One of the hosts didn’t let me cancel since I booked a non-refundable room. But after persistently communicating the strike situation, they finally agreed on it.

1️⃣ isn’t an easy one and comes with a lesson. So my outbound flight is booked with AEROLINEAS ARGENTINAS, whose English customer service took forever to respond so Spanish line was contacted in the end. As for the refund, I had almost $40 lost in the end due to the fluctuation of Argentine Peso. For the inbound flight, it was booked with Flybondi, which doesn’t have a customer service contact so can only be disputed via credit card.

💡 Lesson learned 1: you’d better speak some Spanish or have someone speaking Spanish so the process can be smoother.

💡Lesson learned 2: when you travel to a country whose currency is relatively unstable, it’s better to get prepared (both mentally and financially) for the decent amount of exchange lost.

The advantages of plan change - discover hidden food!

Even though it’s a pity not being able to see the glacier and The Mount Fitz Roy, it did give me a chance to discover more things around Buenos Aires: a local bakery that sell super good choco honey cookie that I ended up buying 1 kg; a suspicious food place that the owner claimed to have the best embanadas and I proved him right!; a vegetarian place that make the most delicious vegetarian burger I have ever had 🤤

Stay tuned, I’ll share the details for the upcoming weeks!