Customer Reviews

Backcountry Mexico: A Traveler's Guide and Phrase Book

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Although I speak spanish fairly well, I do not know many of the more technical terms. When my truck broke down in the middle of the Chiapas, I did not know how to begin to tell the mechanic that I finally located what was wrong and what I needed to fix it.

Without the helpful technical phrases abundant in this book, it would have taken me much longer to find the tools and equipment that I needed to repair my vehicle.

I highly recommend it to anyone traveling in the outback in Spanish-speaking countries.

I was a Spanish major in college, but would honestly have no idea how to express myself in a lot of real-life situations to be encountered in the backcountry. So this guide helped me brush up on some of my "practical" Spanish for an upcoming trip to the Sierra Madre, Sonora and Chihuahua. You would probably be better off knowing some basic Spanish before messing with this guide, but it's not 100% essential. The authors use dialogues with topical themes, like "Can I cross your land?" or "Hey, my truck broke down". The dialogues and vocabulary lists highlight colloquial Mexican usage and point out some backcountry "linguistic etiquette" (like addressing people as "amigo" instead of "señor", which is perfectly acceptable in the backcountry). The vocabulary lists here are also great, with a bunch of practical terms arranged thematically.

This isn't just a phrasebook, though. It's also a guide to the practicalities of getting around and enjoying the backcountry and how to behave in situations that most city-hopping tourists just don't encounter. A lot of rural Mexicans (in places like inland Chihuahua, for example) rarely meet tourists and are often offended by arrogant or just plain ignorant gringos who don't necessarily mean offense. This guide addresses some issues like how to ask for permission to cross somebody's land or what to do if you need to ask directions from a woman if the man of the house isn't around. It's also just generally a useful "how to" guide to hiking and camping in rural Mexico.

Great book. Worth taking with you.

It is a great book. It lack grammatical explanations, but it does provide phrases on many subjects, often those you won't find in phrasebooks (e.g. conversations with ranchers on their work). I think not only it may give you specialist vocabulary, but can be a good introduction to conversational language.