Money Exchange ~ Peso/Dollar

[PatsGirl]

Hi Everyone. A large group of us are heading to Isla Mujeres next month and I'm curious about the exchange. Prior visits to Mexico were either AI, one day stops by cruiseship, or very short trips where the exchange rate wasn't such a big deal. There are so many of us this time and we will be paying for everything OOP that the exchange rate does matter

My experience has been that alot of places use a 10-1 system for easy calculating (and because they definately get the better end of the deal, lol) if you pay in US dollars. The exchange right now is around 13-1 though and I want to use pesos as much as possible.

In Isla there are no banks to use, only ATMs and they are around 12-1 which isn't bad but I'm wondering if I can exchange money before I go, either at a local bank or at the airport?

 

[sherry7]

There should be a money exchange place at your local airport. I just got back from Mexico, and the "official" exchange rate was about 13/1 and the "unofficial" exchange rate was about 10/1. I'm trying to remember the name of the place at the airport. It's a chain that I've seen many times. Travelex maybe? We traded in our leftover pesos there when we got home. BTW, they won't take coinage in trade, so I ended up with a couple of hundred pesos as keepsakes.

We just used the ATM machine in Mexico to get pesos. I'm not sure financially how that worked out, since I had to pay a fee to both the Mexican bank and my bank. It probably would have been similar to just use US dollars and do the 10/1 exchange. We spent less than 1000 pesos during our trip though. It was an 11 night cruise, but I had prepaid for all of our excursions online, and we really didn't shop a lot at all.

On a few places, the shops had the prices listed for both pesos and dollars. Usually it was slightly the our advantage to pay in pesos, but not always.