"Are you travelling anywhere on Thursday?" he asks.

I nod. "Yeah, we're flying from Cordoba to Buenos Aires."

"Hmm." The guide raises his eyebrows. "Maybe you're not. I think there will be a strike."

A strike? We check the news when we get back to the hotel and he's right. There's been a general strike called for Thursday. Not only will the airlines be on strike, but the buses will be on strike, the trucks will be on strike, and pretty much everyone else in the entire country will be on strike.

In Argentina, they love a strike. This does not bode well for getting from Cordoba to Buenos Aires.

Everyone else seems fairly relaxed about it though. Some of the locals don't think it will happen - there are threats of strikes all the time. Others don't think the airlines will join in. A few think the unions will get their way and the strike won't be needed.

For us travellers, we just have to wait. Maybe we'll have to come up with another plan for getting to BA. Maybe we'll have to book a new hotel and cancel another one. We'll see.

When you're on the road, this sort of thing happens, and not just in South America. Anyone who's spent much time in Western Europe will know the feeling.

It's a cliche, but the French do seem to go on strike a lot. Italians too. I've tried to visit Orvieto in Italy, only to find that the guys who run the funicular up to the mountaintop town were on strike. I've marvelled at the amount of rubbish lying around the streets of Rome, before finding out that the garbage workers were staging a protest.

It happens. Even on this South American trip, my mate and I have already been caught up in industrial action of sorts. In Santiago, the students were on strike (if you can strike from being a student), protesting about education funding by taking to the streets and tangling with police.

We were in a restaurant when we started sneezing and our eyes watering. "It's pepper," said a waiter. I'm thinking, ground pepper? But no - it was wafts of pepper spray coming from a demonstration that had devolved into something of a riot.

We took cover in the restaurant until it calmed down.

So in the grand scheme of things, this potential strike in Argentina isn't too much of a worry. So we'll have to rearrange our plans a little - no big deal.

By the time we make it to Cordoba, the strike talk has increased. The Aerolineas Argentinas rep at Mendoza Airport was pretty sure the action would go ahead.

"I won't be on strike," he said. "But everyone else ..." So here are the options: we book an extra night in Cordoba, and ride out the strike in the middle of the country. Or, we book an overnight bus for Wednesday and arrive in BA on the morning of strike day, risking not being able to get into the city because the truck drivers have been known to park across the highways and seal off the city during industrial action.

The third option is to try to change our flight to the Wednesday night, and give up a night in Cordoba. I'm not too hopeful this is even an option, given everyone in the country must be trying to rebook their flights right at this moment, and no one is answering the phone at Aerolineas, but my mate Dan is confident we can make it happen.

So while he works the iPad on the Aerolineas site, I'm on my laptop looking up bus timetables.

We'll later meet an Australian guy who organised an entire private plane to get him from Mendoza to Buenos Aires on the Thursday. We'll meet an English couple who took the night bus to get from Cordoba to Mendoza.

For us, however, there's been a miracle. Dan - with help from his girlfriend at home, who's a travel agent - has swapped our flights to the Wednesday night. We're off to BA a little early, but there are far worse things that can happen.

We arrive at the airport and jump on that plane. The next day the strike goes ahead. Buenos Aires is a ghost town of shuttered shop windows and car-free streets. But at least we're there.

Email: b.groundwater@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Instagram: instagram.com/bengroundwater