Buquebús

Buquebús is the transport link at the center of Lucas Pereyra’s day trip from Buenos Aires to Montevideo: he takes a fast ferry to Colonia, continues by bus, and plans to return directly by boat that evening. The crossing gives physical form to the novel’s entanglement of financial pressure, border controls, and the narrator’s hope of briefly escaping his stalled life.

Route and Passenger Journey

Pereyra’s ticket combines the fast boat to Colonia with onward bus travel to Montevideo. He intends to make the entire journey in one day, returning on the direct ferry. At the terminal, he presents his identification at check-in and confirms the itinerary; the exchange is routine, but the employee’s prolonged look and cold smile unsettle him. He wonders whether same-day travelers are being marked or added to a list, a suspicion the scene presents as his anxious interpretation rather than confirmed company policy.

The departure unfolds through the practical sequence of a ferry crossing. Pereyra passes his backpack through a scanner, follows the roped passage through customs, has his document and ticket checked by migration staff, poses for a camera, and provides a thumbprint before entering the waiting area. Once aboard, he hears the safety instructions in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. The vessel leaves the dock and carries him away from the Buenos Aires shoreline across the Río de la Plata.

A Crossing Driven by Money

The trip is not tourism. Pereyra has come to collect advances on book contracts paid in dollars. He had opened an account in Montevideo months earlier, but the money has only now arrived. If transferred to Argentina, he explains, the dollars would be converted at the official rate and subject to income tax; collecting them in Uruguay and bringing them back as cash would allow him to exchange them at the unofficial rate and retain more than twice as much. He knows he will return with more dollars than permitted, making the journey a calculated risk shaped by Argentina’s currency controls.

The terminal’s parking shortage becomes part of that risk-conscious planning. The Buquebús lot is full, so Pereyra leaves his car in a parking area across the avenue. He is uneasy about having to walk the two dark blocks back to it at night with the money on him. The parking decision is an incidental inconvenience on departure, but it later supplies the setting for a false account he considers telling: he imagines claiming that he was robbed on the way to the car, although that is not where the actual robbery occurs.

Departure, Return, and Narrative Significance

As the ferry pulls away, Pereyra feels intense relief at leaving Argentina, even temporarily. The crossing briefly suspends the pressures he associates with home: unpaid bills, postponed repairs, and the sense that lack of money prevents him from writing or acting. He imagines that the author advances will resolve not only the household’s finances but also his depression and creative paralysis. The ferry thus carries a practical solution in prospect, while its open-water passage becomes an interval in which escape seems possible.

The return journey reverses that expectation. After the robbery, Pereyra boards for Buenos Aires without the dollars he had come to collect; on arrival, workers search him and inspect his belongings, including the ukulele he is carrying. He has nothing left for them to find. His car remains where he parked it, and Catalina retrieves it fifteen days later. Buquebús therefore marks both the route of the hoped-for financial rescue and the boundary across which Pereyra returns emptied of money, injured, and changed by the day. The company is not depicted through its internal organization or policies; its significance lies in the ferry passage and terminal procedures that organize this episode of the novel.