US dollars exchange to Colombian Peso? Where?

GMistral wrote:

Does anyone know where can I exchange some US Dollars for Colombian pesos in Cuenca?

They’re doing repairs these days at the Cuenca airport, so the money-exchange booth(s) there may be closed.

Don’t sweat it, though, G.  As soon as you enter Colombia, you’ll have a choice of money changers available.

Most of the pesos I’ve gotten this past week using USD have been from money-changing offices next to my hotel.  One night at a Medellin casino, a blackjack player who knew I needed pesos pulled out a thick wad of them .. and convinced me I would get a better exchange rate from him than from the casino ‘caja.’

Tulcán, Ecuador, the last town before your likely border crossing, sees a lot of pesos .. and probably would be an easier place than Cuenca down south .. to hunt for Colombian money.

You have a good backup plan available too -- U.S. dollars.  For instance, Medellín taxi drivers love ‘em.  I got a taxi ride my first night in town -- with no pesos on me yet -- by paying with greenbacks.

cccmedia from Medellín

GMistral wrote:

Would I be taxed as money that is leaving the country?

As long as you don’t bring more than $10,000 USD per person or its equivalent into Colombia, you’ll be fine on that score.

There should be confirmation of this somewhere on the Ecuador travel.state.gov website.

cccmedia from Medellín

There are ATM (also called ATH, A Toda Hora, or cajero automatico) machines all over the place in Colombia, even in smaller cities (you can do a search, 'ATH en Cali' for instance, to see some of the ATMs in Cali but the internet does not list them all).  They accept many debit and credit cards and you'll get a good exchange rate from your provider, my provider even reimburses any ATM fees.  Why would you want to carry a lot of cash with you when you don't need to, when you can get Colombian pesos as you need them by going to an ATM machine?

In Colombia and even in Ecuador, you should not "dar papaya" by carrying large amounts of cash around - and "large" is a relative term when people's monthly salaries may not surpass even $500 USD.