www.CostaRicaTicas.com

At the BAC-San Jose near my Guanacaste office they post the CAN to Colones rate on the wall. I do not remember what it was yesterday. If I go in there again today I will let you know. Their website is www.bac.net, you can then select Costa Rica but I do not see the CAN to Colones exchange rate listed on the web site.

I personally have deposited CAN cash into an account I have in USD at Bac San Jose. I have also received countless transfers of CAN into this account from my clients.

So yes, you can exchange for Colones once in country. But I would recommend taking advantage of your advantages exchange rate towards USD in Canada and starting that way. Just my 2 cents on the questions.

Hope that helps a little bit.

Just a little follow up to questions about exchange rates in general.

You will ALWAYS get the best exchange rate possible by going to a BCR (Banco Costa Rica) or BN (Banco Nacional) location.

There are two locations at the airport to exchange money and they do so at a worse exchange rate, but consider this a convenience fee for doing business with them.

If you have some patience and can speak some very BASIC spanish (for example, "quiero cambiar esto para Colones") I would go to one of the large locations of BCR or BN and just get in line for the cashier to make the transaction. I would plan on 30 to 45 minutes to get it done.

There are a few observations to my recommendation to getting this done in a practical manner.

1. Monday mornings are busy in all banks
2. The 15th and 30th are busy after 11:30 am as it is pay day for the vast majority of the people working in the country
3. Friday afternoons are generally very busy
4. Saturdays not all branches are open so those that are tend to be very busy
5. If any of these fall on the same day (example, Fri or Sat is the 15th or 30th of the month), look out because even the ATM;s will run out of cash (on July 15th I was in San Jose and needed to withdraw 100,000 Colones from one of my accounts and the machine gave me 50 2,000 Colones bills and the next person in line was not able to withdraw even 10,000 Colones as I had gotten the last of the loot from that particular machine)


Another phase to the exchange rate in Costa Rica is to just use a BCR or BN atm at any of their locaitons. The fee from the BCR or BN will only be $1.00, what your bank charges you will have to answer as most are different.

You will get the best possible rate of the day from the machine and will have a choice between Colones and USD at the machine. The machines also have an option for English or Spanish just after you enter your PIN#.

In summary, if you are trying to stay off the grid and only use cash that you bring with you, I would take a little time one morning and go to any BCR or BN location and make the exchange at the counter. If you can use your foreign ATM card, take the money from the machine at the bank and you will get the same rate as you would at the counter and the ATM fee is only $1.00 from this end.

If you use the ATM at either Scotia Bank, Bac San Jose, Citibank, or HSBC you will get a slightly less favorable exchange rate (as will also happen at the counter) as these banks have to purchase and sell Colones and USD from BCR and therefore have to make a little something for the effort. Most of the time the difference is only about 10 Colones per USD on both the buying and selling rates.

Excellent information CRGolfer, thanks!

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Man I'm living life like a great white shark swimming with minnows! It's all about panocha, great scotch, fine cigars, loud-ass rock music and speed, speed, speed - plus spending as much time as possible in paradise on earth, Costa Rica!

For anyone interested in the Canadian to American rates, I just bought almost three grand of US greenbacks for a rate of 0.9835 at my local Bank of Montreal today. Made almost $50 on the purchase... enough for a drink or two and a session at HLH

That's about 1.0168 USD for every CD. I looked it up and that is about 0.03 off the true Bank of Canada rate for today, so not a bad exchange at all, IMO. I really like how my local BMO branch keeps a good stock of US currency on hand. It saves me from having to order it ahead of time or travel to another branch to get it.

OK, tried something else today and I think I found the easiest way to get colones at a great rate (for a Canadian at least). Don't know why I didn't try this before, but Scotia Bank is a Canadian bank with branches in CR so I just tried my normal debit card at the ATM at MasXMenos near the Del Rey. The machine never even blinked and it gave me colones at an exchange of 502 per Canadian dollar, including the 835c service charge the ATM dishes out. So next time I come down, I'll just keep my money nice and safe in my home branch and take out colones as I need them.

I don't really care for the ATH inside of Mas por Menos. Last time I checked you could only pull out 50k per transaction. My favorite is at the AM/PM convenient store. The nearest one to the gulch is at Ave 1 & Calle 11. 50 meters east of the Colonial Casino.

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Now, I am back in the game!

There are two ATM's inside this AM/PM. The machine on your left is from HSBC and the machine on your right is BAC San Jose. Probably one of the most convenient locations (don't believe you would ever see a line for these machines) and a safe location. Exchange rate is only slightly off of the national bank daily rate as these are private banks but still fair and secure option. Only thing about this location to keep in mind is the closing time of AM/PM... I am going to say 9:00 pm. I believe Mon to Fri it may be open until 10:00 pm and on Sun close by 8:00 pm. I do have a USD account with BAC San Jose and have often used this machine when in downtown San Jose and in need of poker buy-in money.

I think in the sense of making an ATM transaction everything is simple and seamless but from my experience with my Canadian clients doing other banking transactions with Scotia Bank is damn difficult.

Technically the Latin American branches are completely separate from the Canadian branches. Andy often my clients have had a hell of a hard time making tranfers from their Canadian branch to a Costa Rican Scotia Bank..... most finding it easier, faster, and cheaper to bank using one of the national banks in Costa Rica instead.

I do have two American clients, who have mortgages in Costa Rica with Scotia Bank (about 5 years ago they were very good about doing both mortgages and auto loans for expats while no other banks in the country would).

I've never had to try doing anything other then a simple atm transaction so I can't comment on that, but for strait debit card use, Scotia Bank seems to work flawlessly. When I've used the other ATM's around CR, like the BCR ones, it seems to take a while for the transaction to process and you don't get any balance information. With Scotia Bank though, the transaction was instant and it provided me with my balance as well. Even though they are technically separate from the Canadian banks, I believe they have superior access to the ATM network in Canada. Another thing I noticed was, that although my account at home is with the Bank of Montreal, my Scotia Bank withdraw showed up right away on my account when I checked online. With BCR, last time I was here, I noticed the funds would be locked out but the transaction didn't show for a business day.

I always joke that the only place I ever had trouble using my Interact Plus debit cards was in the US, lol.