Colonia

Colonia appears chiefly as a point of passage, not as a city the narrator explores: he takes a fast ferry from Buenos Aires, clears customs after arriving, and boards a bus onward to Montevideo. The crossing turns the port into a threshold where a journey driven by money, desire, and escape moves from plan into action.

The ferry crossing

The narrator’s ticket is for the fast ferry to Colonia and a connecting bus to Montevideo, with a same-day return on a direct boat. The journey begins before daylight. After boarding the Buquebús ferry, he sends a message declaring that he is aboard and that he loves the person he has left behind. As the vessel departs, the coast recedes into yellow mist; the safety announcements and the opening of the duty-free shop accompany his sense of relief at being briefly out of Argentina.

The crossing is not a carefree excursion. The narrator is carrying out a plan to collect writing advances in Uruguay and bring the money back as cash, despite the limit on dollars permitted into Argentina. He has opened a bank account in Montevideo, where the advances from two book contracts have arrived, because converting them through an Argentine bank would leave him with substantially less. Colonia is therefore the first stage of a journey shaped by currency controls and the risks of moving money across a national border.

Arrival and onward travel

As the ferry approaches, passengers crowd toward the exit. The narrator joins the rush to disembark, walks through a metal-sided passageway, and passes through customs before heading to the buses. He believes he has reached the front of the queue, only to find the bus already full, apparently with passengers from another ferry. He takes a cramped seat beside the wheel, accepting the discomfort for a view from the right-hand window.

The bus leaves the port and follows a road bordered by tall palm trees. The narrator’s exuberance gathers around the movement itself: the bright morning, the undulating landscape, and the feeling of being carried away from the Argentine pampas. He senses the nearby sea beyond the fields, although the water is still the Río de la Plata, not yet the open sea. Colonia’s narrative presence lies in this transition from ferry to road, from arrival to the onward journey.

A gateway to an imagined country

The journey toward Montevideo also releases memories of the narrator’s earlier meeting with Magalí Guerra in Valizas. The palm-lined route and approaching coast become associated with that past summer and with his anticipation of seeing Guerra again. His attachment is directed not only toward her but toward Uruguay as he has assembled it from memories, videos, songs, and imagined streets. The crossing begins to carry him into that private geography, even before he reaches the city he has idealized.

The story keeps the distinction between the actual crossing and the narrator’s projections visible. Colonia is not developed through local landmarks or an extended stay; it functions as the port where the border is crossed and the bus journey begins. That limited depiction matters: the narrator’s escape is at once materially specific, involving tickets, customs, a crowded bus, and money subject to restrictions, and emotionally expansive, opening onto a landscape charged with memories and hopes.