Originally Posted by
golmaale
During this trip I have patronized mostly modest restaurants, where the bill rarely exceeded COP$38,000 for a main course. But looking around me, most of the other diners seem to be local and do not appear to be particularly affluent. So how do they manage to afford these prices if the hourly wages are a little more than US$1.
I even popped into a McDonald's in Cartagena, and the prices there seemed to be higher than the average US McDonald's.
It would be interesting to see if Colombia is a country tracked by
The Economist on its Big Mac Index.
I have noticed that almost all international branded/luxury goods are more expensive in Colombia than North America. Branded apparel, Japanese and European cars, consumer electronics... I would expect all of these to be more expensive in Col than the USA.
There's a reason why wealthy/upper middle class Colombians fortunate enough to have visas do their shopping in Miami.
Edited to add: as of July 2013,
The Economist lists the price of a Big Mac in Colombia as US$4.48 (COP8600 at market exchange rate of 1921). Based on that, the Colombian peso is undervalued by 1.8% vs. USD.