Money - credit cards vs. $RD vs. $US

Credit cards are fine in the bigger restaurants, stores etc.  However, I suspect you will be buying more local and you will want to have cash.  You can bring American $$$ and exchange it at an exchange house or Western Union or even the bank as long as the currency is $100USD or less.  Or you can use your debit card and withdraw from an ATM machine but make sure that your PIN number is only 4 digits.  US currency can be used easily as well except you will find that you won't get as good of an exchange rate.  Traveller's cheques can be more difficult and I have had better results with the previous methods over Traveller's cheques.  There are also some credit cards where you can avoid the 2.5% hidden exchange charge such as Chase.

Cheers,

All good info from Mike.  Traveler's checks here are USELESS and impossible to cash.  Use cash, or ATMs

Bob K

Thanks Mike and Bob!  We have a couple of credit cards that do not have foreign transaction fees, and those are the ones we'll be carrying.  We'll hit the ATM if we run low on cash.

I haven't used travelers checks in at least 20 years!  That option didn't even cross my mind!

About how much should we budget in cash per day to cover meals and adult beverages for 2?  Casual neighborhood places - nothing fancy!

A casual meal with a drink or two in a non tourist restaurant or bar should run you about $20 or so for both of you.

Bob K

So hard to judge without know you better.  Bob is good on that $20 as long as you dont drink  2 bottles of wine at dinner......  Drink local  beer and rum and its good.

Beer  is about US 2 a small bottle.  Rum and coke $3 by the drink or less depending where you go and if you hit happy hour  LOL

Food is fairly inexpensive again depending where you go.