Buquebus Reviews 

My experience with Buquebus on the Colonia to Buenos Aires route was traumatic.

Before the trip, I contacted the company in advance to ask how I was supposed to obtain authorization to travel with my dog, Rulo, specifically to avoid problems at boarding. I even have WhatsApp messages from Buquebus stating that this authorization is only decided at the moment of embarkation and that there is no prior contact number to confirm it.

In other words, the company itself left me in a situation where I had to arrive at the boat without any clear resolution in advance.

Once on board, we were told that only guide dogs for blind passengers were allowed, and they tried to remove us from the vessel. From that moment on, the situation became awful: several staff members spoke to us aggressively, with no empathy and no willingness to find a reasonable solution.

I ended up having an anxiety attack and had to take medication. My daughter started crying and was also emotionally overwhelmed. My dog was crying and howling because they wanted to separate him from us and send him to the kennel area.

The “solution” they ultimately imposed was even worse: my daughter had to remain with the dog inside the car, in the lower deck area, during the trip. It was an extremely distressing and potentially unsafe situation.

And this was not an isolated incident. On a previous trip, in a similar situation, my husband was forced to remain with the dog in a supervised room for the entire journey and was not even allowed to leave to use the bathroom.

I have traveled many times with Rulo, including on other Buquebus services, without ever experiencing this level of arbitrariness and mistreatment. The worst part was not only the rule they tried to apply, but the complete lack of humanity, the aggression, the contradictory information, and the cruel way they handled a clearly sensitive situation.

I do not recommend Buquebus to anyone traveling with pets. It was a traumatic and unacceptable experience.

We used Buquebus to go Buenos Aires to Montevideo and back and often for Premier/First Class it was a very comfortable trip with check-in and airport like experience with excellent luggage handling. I definitely recommend the smoked salmon and avocado sandwich in the restaurant which is pricey at $33 but huge and left use unable to eat anything else until late in the evening! The free (real) champagne offsets the cost a bit we managed to get two glasses each.