Customer Reviews

Adventure Guide to the Yucatan, Cancun & Cozumel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With such an extensive selection of travel guides for the "horn" of Mexico, including Quintana Roo (East-Caribbean), Yucatan (North-interior), and Campeche (West-Gulf of Mexico), the selection for THE travel guide to these regions is not obvious. Lonely Planet, Moon, Fodors, Frommers, and Eyewitness are just a few of the more widely known and popular. Conord's Adventure Guide Series "The Yucatan, Cancun & Cozumel" opened a doorway I would have missed had I relied upon these other venerable guides. Bruce and June Conord leave the main roads and La Cuota behind to explore the regions surrounding Cancun, Valladolid & Chichen Itza, Merida, the Maya, Church, and Convent routes (La Rutas Maya, Iglesia, y Convento) and many other fascinating locales.

A quick glance at this Adventure Series guide reveals a plethora of adventure and culture awaiting any traveler willing to get off the main tourist road/La Cuota and experience El Mexico tipico, the real Mexico. Whether you wish to know of the magnificent cenotes (sinkholes) hidden just off the highways awaiting you with their cool blue waters, or the quaint little thatch-roofed restaurants visited by ex-pats and locals, Spanish colonial Haciendas built to amaze and pamper travelers, ancient villages nestled in the Puuc hills near Uxmal, this guide is the key to these unseen treasures you simply will not find in many of the guides listed above. Yes, Lonely Planet or the Moon Guide can point you in the right direction for a nifty little hostel overlooking the main plaza in Merida (as do the Conords), but they lack some of the insight and author's tips that can come only from personal relationships with many owners/proprietors and locals who live in the area. The Conords offer not just the obvious choice of where to stay or eat; by providing insider tips and offering both the good and bad, they provide a perspective that seems to be spoken from the locals themselves.

Guides such as Fodors and Frommers excel in rating and testing hotels, restaurants, and shopping. In truth, the Adventure Series Guide can not compete with such thoroughness. Yet much is left out by these other popular guides that Conords shine so brightly in documenting and elaborating upon. Author's notes, historical backgrounds, quotations, and contact information abound in the Adventure Series Guide. Fodors offers only its few top choices for bungalows and hotels along the popular Boca Paila Road near Tulum. The Conords review almost every establishment in either direction of the road near the Tulum crossroads. Lacking its own rating system, Adventure Series Guide works well in conjunction with these other narrow yet precise travel guides.

The authors' strength lies not in sheer quantity, but by giving enough choices and explaining how things truly function and are accessed in each area. Other guides can be limiting in the offerings of only the "safe" bets. Safe does not always equate to adventure and "an experience" that many of us want in a vacation. With over 400 pages of easy to read descriptions, suggestions, Maya history & vocabulary, witty anecdotes, and ample coverage of Cancun, Playa D.C., Isla Mujeres, and Cozumel in addition to off-the-beaten-path, a traveler who takes this guide to the horn of Mexico is sure to find their own unique adventure.

I spent a week in Cancun last year and this was the only guidebook I took with me. The best part about this book is that it highlights some more out of the way sites and things to see and do. I also appreciated the section on car rental since we did end up renting one to see some of the aforementioned out of the way sites (Tulum and Aktun Chen - which, if you are planning a trip to the Yucatan, are must-see sites).

The dining recommendations were spot on. We ate at several of the reviewed restaurants and were very happy. When I didn't follow their recommendations, I was a bit disappointed (they were right and I didn't listen).

If you want a Mexican vacation where you sun yourself on a beach and want some upscale dining and hotel recommendations, this book might not be for you. However, if you want to stay busy every day with exciting things to do and interesting sites to see, this book will surely help you on your adventure.

Absolutely, hands down, the best guide book on the Yucatan. What mystifies me, is that with all its glowing customer reviews, it doesn't come up on an Amazon search of Yucatan guide books (or at least not anywhere near the top as it should). You really have to search it out. Shame because lots of people will miss out.

Walk into any bookstore and you will find scores of travel guides about Mexico. This one, however, stands out in my mind as being one of the better ones. While many books of this type have photos in the front and back matter, the authors have strategically placed their own shots throughout the guide, thus breaking up the text and making it a much more interesting book to read.

They do a good job of covering the Yucatan Peninsula along with many favorite traveler hotspots like Cozumel and Cancun. Bruce and June Conord have visited this area many times and their intimate knowledge of places off the beaten path is shared for all to discover along with some interesting historical background of the Mayan culture.

All of the information about this region is covered in this book including local eateries, where to stay, jungle tours, historic towns and local customs. There is also a nice selection of local and regional maps.

Whether you plan to visit the Mayan Riviera, Tulum, Playa Del Carmen or Belize, this is the only guide you will ever need and I highly recommend it.
RON'S TRAVEL TRIPS (Ron Stem) - APRIL NEWSLETTER

The adventure guide's original intention is good, and the book contains mostly solid opinions on where to go and where not to go, at least according to my personal taste. Unfortunately, six years is a VERY long time when it comes to tourism in Yucatan these days, and the book is in desperate need of an update. For example,

- some price charts are off by a factor of 3 or more (e.g. Punta Allen Peninsula)
- the maps are "not to scale", schematic, occasionally wrong and simply useless for driving
- new road information is not included (we got tricked into using a USD 30 (!) toll road from Merida to Cancun which was not mentioned in the book or any of its maps)
- hotels and restaurant information is out of date (name changes etc)
- ferry schedules and even locations have changed (the car ferry to Cozumel does not leave at Puerto Morelos any more!)
- some places marked as tranquil have fallen victim to mass tourism by now

Bottom line is, despite being a good companion on our Yucatan trip, it subjected us to an awful lot of "driving / walking around and looking for stuff" time which could have been avoided with updated information. But then, driving around the Yucatan isn't so bad!

This is a great guide. I've been to the Yucatan and Cozumel many times, and have family who live there. Still I found new places to go and things to do using this guide. I recommend it over the other guides out there. Some of the other guides claiming to be for the current year (2007-2008) list restaurants that closed down 2 or 3 years ago as favorites. It doesn't seem like the reviewers have actually been to the area. This guide really does seem to be from first hand experience. The descriptions are honest and informative.

I believe Lonely Planet guides remain the reference point in fact of information retrieval, maps, handy format, stronger binding. However this book is a good complement to another guide (Lonely Planet Mexico but also Footprint Central America and Mexico) having a lot of information (but for that do not consider the number of pages, the style is not much condensed and the fonts are big). Pleasant writing style.

We visited the Yucatan area for ~8 days and used this book extensively throughout our trip. This is an excellent guide if you like to do things different than the mainstream. Not surprisingly we got tired of Cancun itself very quickly, with it's Vegas-like atmosphere, crowds and prices. This book was the only reference we needed to visit the surrounding region and provided a great overview of the 'real' Yucatan.

However, the coverage of hotels and restaurants is not comprehensive. The authors only describe the places that where they have actually eaten/stayed, with a lot of personal opinions rather than objective views. Also, they seem to be fixated on bakeries, which was kind of odd.

Overall a great book, but I would suggest to get a complementary guide for the purpose of food/lodging.

This is a great guide we have been using now for the last two editions. We have looked at other guides, and so far this one is the most comprehensive for folks who want an unbiased guide to travel and learn the local flavor, locations, and habits of the people of Cancun and the Yucatan. If you are an "all-inclusive" type traveler who stays in one of those mega-resorts, this guide may enable you to see what you are missing by not venturing out on your own outside of the "packaged" trips controlled by the mega-resorts. If it had more information on local shopping areas like Mercado 28, Mercado 23, etc. and more local street restaurants, I would have rated it a 5.

Might be a great book, but for my purposes (travel from Cancun to Tulum) it really didn't cut it. (1) None of the maps are to scale. Not a big deal, but in some instances towns don't appear to be placed in the correct geographic locations (e.g., shows Playa de Carmen located inland), and in the text the authors sometimes neglect to mention how far the town is from benchmarks (e.g., other towns, kilometer markers). As a result, you will have no idea if you are getting close or still have 20 km to go. In unfamiliar terrain this is somewhat of a big deal ("did we pass it?"). (2) Many of the prices listed in the book are WAY off. Not sure how this could be unless the locals have recently figured out they can charge a lot more. (3) Some of the recommended "budget" or "moderately-priced" hotels were faily sketchy. Personally, I wouldn't recommend a hotel that didn't come with a toilet seat on the toilet, or that provided only one dingy, ripped towell for the shower. Maybe that suits budget travelers, but at $60/night I doubt it.