First, Venezuela is still very much worth visiting...Alright, I only visit MAR for personal reasons, and I wouldn't be in any kind of hurry to go to CCS, but I'm told the beaches in the state of Falcon are great, as are other parts of the country (Angel Falls, the Andes etc).

I don't have a definite answer for your question about tourists, but, to give you an idea of how common the practice is, on Friday I changed $750 for 4500 bolivars (which is A LOT of banknotes- the largest denomination is 100, and it's not all that common) with the shopkeeper of a shop brimming with people who could obviously see what we were doing and nobody batted an eyelid. I was quite apprehensive about doing this in public, but my friend and the taxi driver both insisted that it's "normal".

In the CCS airport, there are people who will shout at you "cambio" "compro euros al mejor precio" and things like that.

Moreover, I don't profess to know the details of Venezuelan currency exchange laws, but I would be very surprised if anyone (local or foreigner) got jailed for this kind of stuff. My understanding is that they constitute administrative offenses that are punishable by way of fines only.


It's not only that...If they want to travel abroad, they are only officially allowed to buy like $600, and it's nigh on impossible to find anyone prepared to buy bolivares outside of Venezuela. Similarly, small business owners who import stuff are also limited to a certain amount of dollars, and the process is very complex, so they may want to buy some of their merchandise (or at least offer deposits to their vendors) in hard-currency cash.

As explained above, I think it's extremely unlikely for anyone to get caught and fined for this...