This came as a very big surprise to us – it turns out that as of 2008, US dollars and Euros are taken at par in St. Martin/Sint Maarten. Of course, this made for a 30% discount for everything with US Dollars. We’re not sure if we would have been able to take US Dollars out of bank machines (everybody seemed to have them in the cash registers) – but we blew through our US cash very quickly.  Our taxi ride tour of the island was at an instant discount, as was our hotel, and cab fare from the airport.