Money Tips for El Salvador
If you have already booked a trip to El Salvador, congrats! If you haven’t yet, you should. You can read about our experiences in the Ruta De Las Flores and El Zonte areas, but this is an amazing country. For all our tips on getting around the country, visit our post here. For now, let’s get straight to the money. El Salvador uses the United States Dollar (USD) as it’s official currency, which makes it super easy when traveling from the USA. There is zero money to exchange, and ATMs will always dispense USD. However, there are several things to consider:
Plan to use cash for all small purchases.
Before you arrive to El Salvador go to your bank and get plenty of bills in various denominations: $5, $10, $20 at least. It’s often better in other countries to only have large bills, as it may be easier or get better rates when exchanging, but this is NOT the case for El Salvador. It’s hard to pay with big bills at times. I was unable to break larger bills multiple times, so this is helpful to know of the front end.
Major pro tip: Bring at least $25 in dollar coins, not dollar bills. The locals only use dollar coins so you’ll immediately have some street cred. You’ll use quarters for the local 25 cent “chicken bus”, and a combination of quarters and dollar coins for the smaller buses which cost $1.50.
Our Favorite Travel Card
We used our Capital One Venture Card with contactless payment at Super Selectos grocery stores, when refilling the rental car with gas, and at 1-2 restaurants. We highly recommend this card because they have done an awesome job for us in the past with fraud protection after some issues. Also, there are zero international transaction fees and you earn rewards for travel, along with other perks. If you use our link there’s an insane initial reward offer that could pay for an entire trip.
One incredible feature from Capital One is ability to create and use virtual cards. Read more about that here. For example, we used a virtual card to book our shuttle from El Zonte to Guatemala, for a worry-free and hassle-free payment experience. I’m sure the company we used is just fine, but we set it up so that only 1 transaction can ever go through, so there’s just zero worries that any fraud arises down the road.
Sample Pricing in El Salvador
We found the prices in El Salvador very reasonable. Some examples: $12/day to rent a compact car ($30/day for our compact SUV), although you do have some mandatory insurance requirements. You can try to meet these using your personal plans, otherwise it should cost around $15/day. A family of 4 can eat local fresh fruit and 2 pupusas each for $10, good for either lunch or dinner. Nicer restaurants may run closer to $50 for dinner. We feasted at the Juayua food festival for $20 total. At the grocery store, local products were very inexpensive (bananas, mangoes, avocadoes, local breads) while imported “American” foods are costly. Easy solution, eat local. We averaged $12/day per person for food while in El Salvador.
It’s worth it to spend the extra money to stay at some great places. Our AirBnb in Juayua and Puro Surf in El Zonte won’t disappoint!
To see all our travel adventures during a year-long trip around the world, head over to our Instagram page.
**This post contains affiliate links. All opinions are our own.
Have questions about traveling to Central America with kids? Drop us a comment—we love sharing the real-life details that make trips smoother.
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