Today we're leaving our beautiful apartment here
in Buenos Aires to take the Buquebus ferry over to Uruguay. I've read a few different
reports on how this ferry works and all of them seem a little bit different.
So we'll see what we're getting into. Our trip to Uruguay starts with a 20-minute Uber
ride from our apartment in Palermo to the Buquebus ferry terminal in the Puerto Madero neighborhood
of Buenos Aires. The driver drops us off right at the front door and we head to the check-in area.
It appears to be very empty. On our ticket it says to arrive 2 hours ahead of time. Since our
ferry is at 10:45 we arrived here just a little after 8:45. When we got here though we found out
they're not starting check-in until 9:00 a.m. A little before 9 the check-in booths open and the
line moves quickly as we get our boarding passes for both the ferry to Colonia and the bus to
Montevideo. And then we make our way through security and then immigration. Once that's done
we walk to the waiting area which has a spot to buy some snacks and drinks, and plenty of seating
to wait before we board. It's 9:15 now and we're getting to the boarding area which means it took
us about 15 minutes from the time we got into the line to get our tickets to clear immigration and
security and get to the boarding area. Here are my notes about the check-in process. The first thing
is when you go up to the desk to get your boarding pass all you have to do is show your passport they
have everything else. I didn't need to show my QR code or my ticket they had all the information
just by showing my passport. Going through security I wasn't sure how that was going to work.
I had read that any liquids at all needed to be checked but for us that wasn't the case. We got
through with all our toiletries in small airline size containers. And we also got through with full
water bottles that we had filled before we left the apartment this morning. Migration is pretty
straightforward and what you might expect. There was just a little thing that happened to us that I
wanted you to be aware of: the first thing we did was we cleared exit control on the Argentinian
side. We gave them our passports they took our photos took our fingerprints like they did when
we went in. Then the guy said to us "follow me", and we thought uh oh, what's happening? He takes
our passports and we have to follow him. We weren't sure where we were going but he ends up
just bringing us to another booth with a little Uruguay flag on it. I guess because we have a
Canadian passport we not only need to do exit control in Argentina but then we also need to do
entry into Uruguay. And so we just went through the process again with her of showing her our
passport she stamped them and then we were on our way. And now we wait. We have about an hour and a
half wait and there doesn't seem to be any wifi in this boarding area so we entertain ourselves with
books games and boat watching instead. And finally it's boarding time. No overhead announcement we
just saw people going. Let's get over there. We just booked the basic fair but we didn't have any
issues boarding or finding seats together. And we're off right on time at 10:45. The ferry has
two levels for foot passengers and another deck for cars. On our level, in addition to our seating
area there is also a currency exchange, duty free shop, bathrooms, a business class seating area,
and a snack bar. We're cheap though so we brought our own food. And of course people brought their
own yerba mate too. On the level above ours there is a more comfortable seating area and another
snack bar. These chairs look pretty comfortable up here so I'm not sure why they aren't all taken.
We're just getting to Uruguay and we found out we can use our SIM card here. We have a Claro SIM
card from Argentina. They texted us just now saying that we can recharge and add a roaming
pack so we went in and we added money to our account and we just bought a $10 uh roaming pack
and we're going to be able to use our phone here in Uruguay. We get into Colonia right on time and
we see the buses that will take us to Montevideo as we exit the ferry. You can also book a ferry
that goes directly from Buenos Aires to Montevideo but when we booked it was twice the price and it
had way less departure options. Our bus filled up quickly and we left around 12:10 as another
bus came in to get the next set of passengers. We're on the bus. We got the last two seats next
to each other but they are at the very back of the bus right next to the washroom. So we'll see
if we regret the choice of sitting together or not. Our 2 and a half hour bus ride goes pretty
smoothly. We only have one bathroom pooper the whole time and our seats turned out to be pretty
reasonable. When we arrived at the Tres Cruses bus terminal in Montevideo, which it turns out is
also a shopping mall, we tried to request an Uber, but the app was taking a really long time and
it couldn't seem to find us a driver. So we went to an ATM took out some Uruguayan pesos then
hopped in one of the many taxis waiting outside to take us to our accommodation. And that's our
video for today we will see you in the next one.
