Bolivian Money

So I have to vent a bit…the conversion rate between Bolivianos (Bs) and US Dollars is annoying…. 7:1. That math never ends up nice. The biggest bills we have had so far is Bs 100…which is like 14.2 dollars. On the low end, we have 1 (a bus ride) & 2 (a bottle of water) Bs coins…which are $0.14 and $0.30. Typically though, I end up saying…oh we paid 25Bs for that, that’s what like $3.50 plus? Nothing ever is even!

To make matters worse, lots of people use dollars, so I can’t really just wholesale convert to Bs and forget about dollars. We were at a cafe with two Bolivians we met saturday night and when we went to pay the bill, we were fiddling around with our share, to try and get the right amount of Bs out, and they just drop a US$ 10 bill on the table! We all had a bit of a laugh at that.

2 thoughts on “Bolivian Money

  1. Ya, I remember that exchange rate being a difficult one – and it wasn’t always even how I got the money converted. Just watch your back and try to get the best conversion deals, at least thats how I did it. I almost never used $’s in CBBA, I stuck to B’s and had no trouble – but I was aggressive when I did my conversions.

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