One of the great things about visiting Buenos Aires for the first time is you get a twofer. You get to color in Argentina on your map of countries visited. Then you hop on the ferry—the Busquebus—and an hour later you're in the UNESCO world heritage site, Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay.

We headed down to the Busquebus terminal in the morning for our easy day trip across Río de la Plata. This is what we ran into:

A nightmare! The Black Hole of Calcutta. A mass of human misery, all wanting to go to Uruguay, most going nowhere.

It took a half hour and Bill's incredibly rapidly acquired grasp of Argentinean Spanish just to figure out what the hell was going on.

(Use vos instead of tú; pronounce calle KY-schah, not KY-yah...)

It may not look like it from the photo, but there are four lines, and you have to wait in them all in sequence to get on the ferry. That's not counting the line at the information kiosk where you find out about the other four lines.

First, there's the line to book your ticket. One harried clerk has to handle every person you see there. He has to copy all the information from your travel documents. Then he has to find a slot for you on one of the ferries.

After many minutes of paper shuffling, you are given a coupon. Congratulations! You have just been promoted to the line where you pay for your passage. Be prepared to show your passport again. Be prepared for a clerk to laboriously write your passport information by hand on another form.

Now you choose the appropriate line for check-in for your ferry. Let's say it's the 10:30 AM hydroplane. Don't for God's sake get in the line for the 11:00 AM slow ferry, because when you get up to the front, you'll just get sent back to the end of the 10:30 AM hydroplane line. Oh, yeah. You'll need to show both your ticket and your passport again.

You're almost there, bunkie. Now you get into the security line. Just like at the airport. Take off your shoes, x-ray your luggage, show your ticket and passport again.

We waited in line #1 for over an hour. We finally made it up to the booking clerk. We graciously allowed three people who had reservation problems cut in front of us. Finally we told the man, "We'd like to go to Colonia del Sacramento on the 12:30 PM ferry."

He looked at us incredulously. "You don't mean today?"

"Well, yeah. We just spent two hours waiting this line so we could go over to Uruguay for the day. Today."

He said, "Sorry. No seats until Friday."

—§—

I'm too close to Uruguay to be denied. I'm determined to find a way to get there. Preferably one where it takes less time to buy a ticket than to make the actual crossing.

Next week. I'm gonna try next week. When I've regained my strength. And composure. Maybe if I go at midnight...