Our First Family Vacation

Nightmares don't only occur when you are sleeping, let me tell you! We had a waking walking nightmare of a day to kick off our first family vacation.
As we now are no longer 2 people, but three, we needed to augment the size of our car. We did so by letting this need be known to Claudio's boss, who, three weeks later let us know that there was a truck with back seats waiting for us in a nearby province, Corodoba, just 7 hours from Rosario. Our response to this was "Whoohooo!" we quickly purchased one way bus tickets, and taking advantage of the long Easter weekend, threw a few things in a duffel bag and headed out.
It was to be our first family vacation...stroller, car seat, 10 extra sets of clothes just in case we have repeated diaper explosions...
Come Thursday, we raced to the bus station, hopped on the double-decker, and smiled with anticipation.
Suddenly, approximately 2 hours outside of Rosario, (where we live) the bus began to fill up with smoke and the smell of burnt rubber. Claudio and I were the first to exit the bus with Juani, taking no chances...
An hour went by, us and 100 other passengers standing on the side of the route in front of our non functioning bus. When we over heard the driver begin to say there was no responsive plan of action, that he had no idea when another bus would be there to pick us up, as the company was over extended, we began to worry. As it was, we were suppose to get into Cordoba capital city at 7:30pm where one of Claudio's coworkers would be there waiting to take us another hour and a half to our final destination. So Claudio made the call...first to tell him we would be exaggeratedly late, and second to suggest that perhaps he come to get us even though he was 3 hours away. As it turns out, Claudio has a client in the neighboring town to where we broke down, and he offered to come get us and meet Claudio's coworker in the middle.
This seemed, at the time like a life saving idea.
However...
When Cacho, that is his nickname, picked us up, he suggested we stop by his shop for a bit, to check out the merchandise, drink some mates, change Juani, etc...so that is what we did. An hour later we were back on the road...and roughly an hour into our trip we met up with Ignacio, who was waiting one the side of the road to pick us up...Only then did Claudio realize he had left his wallet and all of the necessary documents to receive our new truck in the showroom of his client...an hour in the direction we had just come from. I wanted to scream!
Again meeting in the middle, Cacho contracted someone to bring the wallet half way to where we were, which meant we then had to backtrack.
To make a nightmarish 7 hour trip into a short story, we finally arrived at our hotel at 11pm. 11 hours after we had left Rosario. (P.S. This trip should only take 5 by car)
Of course, the first thing we wanted to do was go out to see the car we had come so far to fetch. Big mistake.
When we saw it, the first thing we thought was, "why the hell did we come all this way for this pile of junk!?" You see, from the outside it is nothing fancy, and from the inside it needs some TLC...to say the least...but the problem was not the truck, it was the expectations we had conjured up. We had the idea that a new car was awaiting us...wrong.
So, we decided to grumpily tuck ourselves in and try to get some rest, hoping for a better day to come. Well the day was better, though, overnight the temperature dropped to winter "I can see your breath" like temperatures, accompanied by "rain rain go away some again some other day."
We took advantage of the windows when the rain would let up for a brief moment, long enough to make it down the street to a nearby restaurant...etc..
We spent most the day being self critical about our "looking a gift horse in the mouth" attitude and decided that that truck could use some love, but that we had enough of that to go around, and that in the end it would be of good use for us...turned in early and headed home after coffee and stale croissants this morning.
So...our first family vacation...well we sure won't forget it, and while it was pretty uneventful, we can now look back and laugh at the energy that seemed to want to keep us from getting to La Falda, a small historically German settled village in the skirt hills of the Argentine sierras.

The good news is that Juani behaved like a saint! He didn't cry, or protest, or have a meltdown of any sort! He made the whole trip lovely, just like him.