nodakdive
Contributor
Got a question that may have to be answered with something of a wild guess, but so be it. For the things you do in Cozumel, whether paying for food, tips, diving, accommodation, everything you use pesos for now, if you were instead to just use U.S. dollars, how much more do you estimate you'd pay for your trip overall? Put another way, roughly how much money (in U.S. dollars) do you estimate you save by going the pesos route?
Trying to get a sense of the savings you get from figuring out and doing all this.
My guess is that the savings will be based on many factors, but probably not enormous if you're aware of the existence of an exchange rate and you have the ability to calculate it pretty quickly. For me, paying in pesos is more convenient and a matter of peace of mind.
Restaurants, taxis, wherever, it's Mexico and they use and generally price in pesos. Any time there needs to be a conversion, it opens up the chance of an honest mistake at the least. Also, there's no need to worry about a taxi fare or product that is "...95 pesos or 10 dollars US".
The rate right now is somewhat mathematically convenient. If the Seafood Platter for two is 841 pesos, it's easy to move the decimal to the left one place, halve the result and know that the rate is under 20 to 1, so it'll be a little more than 42 dollars US. If they tell me the price in USD is $43.00, I'm not going to sweat the 50 cents. If they tell me the price in USD is $64.00, I'm going to be concerned and will want to discuss the approximate exchange rate with the waiter. By paying in pesos, I avoid the possibility of having that conversation.
That's how I look at it anyway.