Your next trip starts here.
Your cart is empty. Choose a destination to get started.
Browse destinationsIn this guide 5 sections
Follow the ferry ticket onto the Montevideo bus
Colonia Express gets you from Buenos Aires to Montevideo by ferry and bus, changing in Colonia del Sacramento. You finish at Tres Cruces bus terminal, so the onward city transfer belongs in the plan too. It is a perfectly workable journey, provided you discover the bus before a taxi is taking you to the wrong waterfront.
Buy the Montevideo through journey if you want to continue straight through Colonia. Buy a Colonia destination ticket if you want to stop there and arrange your onward travel separately. For the return through journey, start at Montevideo’s Tres Cruces bus terminal, not its ferry port.
Follow the journey all the way to its last stop
The operator’s route table, checked on 21 October 2026, gives these two different products:
| Ticket destination from Buenos Aires | Transport included in the listed service | Published journey estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Colonia | Ferry to Colonia | 1 hour 15 minutes |
| Montevideo | Ferry to Colonia, then connecting bus to Montevideo | 3 hours 30 minutes |
The route you are buying is therefore:
Buenos Aires ferry terminal → Colonia ferry terminal → connecting bus → Tres Cruces, Montevideo → your accommodation.
The last arrow is your own city transfer. Allow for it when agreeing a hotel arrival or booking dinner; the operator’s journey estimate gets you to the terminal, not to your table.
A Montevideo ticket is not simply a Colonia ferry ticket with a more ambitious destination written at the top. The general conditions say additional services must be included at purchase. Select Montevideo as the destination when you want the connecting bus; do not buy Colonia and assume the onward ride comes with it.
Save these two departure addresses
Colonia Express lists its Buenos Aires terminal at Av. Elvira Rawson de Dellepiane 155, Puerto Madero Sur. In Montevideo, it lists Terminal de Tres Cruces, Av. Italia and Blvd. Artigas, Local 25. These are the operator’s published terminal details.
Save the exact Buenos Aires address rather than a generic “ferry terminal” pin. For the journey back, save Tres Cruces separately and label it “Colonia Express bus departure”. That small bit of organisation is more useful than having five screenshots all named Screenshot.
Within Montevideo, the company’s bus-stop guidance names Plaza Cuba and Tres Cruces. A requested earlier stop is something to tell the driver; it is not a promise of hotel drop-off or a rule that the bus will stop anywhere in the city. Tres Cruces is the straightforward endpoint to use for an accommodation pickup.
Local 25 identifies the company office, not necessarily your bus platform. Use the issued departure instructions for where and when to report. Do not use a Colonia ferry departure time as your Montevideo reporting time, because the road journey happens first.
What a morning departure really leaves you
For 1 September–31 October 2026, the published Buenos Aires departures include 08:30, and the Montevideo return departures include 17:00. Applying the operator’s 3½-hour estimate gives this planning calculation:
| Step | Time used in the calculation |
|---|---|
| Leave Buenos Aires | 08:30 |
| Estimated Montevideo arrival | 12:00 |
| Leave Montevideo again | 17:00 |
| Interval between estimated arrival and return departure | 5 hours |
Those five hours are not five sightseeing hours. You still have to leave the arrival terminal, get to what you want to see, return and complete the departure process. Delays reduce the interval further. It can support a deliberately short visit, but an overnight stay is the better choice if you want a relaxed afternoon and evening rather than a race around a list.
The dates matter. The November 2026 timetable moves the earliest Buenos Aires departure to 08:00 and the latest listed Montevideo return to 16:45. These are published schedules, not observed seat availability, and they should not be carried into later months.
Want to see Colonia as well? Make it an actual stop
The change at Colonia gets you onto the Montevideo bus; it does not leave a sightseeing interval you can stretch by heading into town for lunch. If you want an evening among Colonia’s streets, give it a night in the itinerary.
For that version of the trip, choose Colonia as the ferry destination and build a separate onward journey around the time you want there. The operator’s ticket conditions make the booked date and time specific, so do not plan to skip the connecting bus and use a later one on the same ticket.
A useful way to decide is to allocate the nights before comparing transport prices. With two nights available in Uruguay, spending both in Montevideo gives you a full day there without a change of base. Spending the first in Colonia and the second in Montevideo buys you an evening in each, but the middle day includes another transfer. Neither is automatically better; they serve different holidays.
Keep the terminal addresses, accommodation details and both legs of the ticket available offline. If you are choosing a travel eSIM for city maps and pickup messages, check Uruguay as well as Argentina in its country list. One through ticket does not make an Argentina-only data plan work on both sides. Leave room for that final transfer, so the time you meant to spend in Montevideo survives the journey there.
