Baja & Los Cabos (Lonely Planet Baja & Los Cabos) [Paperback]

Lonely Planet (Author), Danny Palmerlee (Author)

Book Description

Series: Lonely Planet Baja & Los Cabos | Publication Date: February 2005

Featuring opinionated coverage for an authentic travel experience, this guidefeatures expanded coverage of Los Cabos, plus special chapters on activities, culture, food and drink, and environment. of color. 33 maps.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Lonely Planet guides are a must-pack” --Toronto Star, February 2006
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Publisher

Destination Baja & Los Cabos

Think of Baja like this: Escape. Once you're on the peninsula, margarita in hand - or your hand on the steering wheel - it's adios world. Unroll the car windows, slap a bag of flour tortillas on the dash and get ready for the ride: wild, boulder-strewn plateaus, towering cardon cacti, those pointy Dr Seussian cirios, elephant trees. As you head south, nothingness morphs into jagged badlands that finally give way to the crystalline, island-studded bays of the Sea of Cortez. Can't pick up Radio Frontera down here.

Meanwhile, on the Pacific side, folks have their eyes on something different: the majestic gray whales calving in the lagoons along the coast. The mothers literally nudge their calves up to the outstretched arms of whale-watchers in their skiffs. Farther south, fly-ins are lounging on Los Cabos' beaches getting ready for another show: sunset over Land's End, a gourmet seafood dinner and a night on the town.

You can sleep beneath the stars on a sandy beach on Bahia Concepcion, with your crackling campfire throwing shadows over your kayak, or party till dawn beneath the nightclub lights of Tijuana or Cabo San Lucas. You can stroll down a lush green fairway overlooking the Sea of Cortez, or hike canyons to the pre-Columbian cave paintings in the Sierra de San Francisco.

Spanish explorers used to think this place was an island. Time and exploration certainly settled that one, but Baja remains - in both geography and in mindset - an island. A frontier spirit pervades, even in developed areas like Los Cabos. Bajacalifornianos (people from Baja) are a breed of their own - friendly, independent and proud of their intrepid past. They're the icing on the cake, really, making Baja one fun place for an escape.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Lonely Planet Publications; 6 edition (February 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1741040132
• ISBN-13: 978-1741040135
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,046,401 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Practical and fun, June 8, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Lonely Planet Baja California (Lonely Planet Baja & Los Cabos) (Paperback)

Lonely Planet's Baja book is an excellent guide to the peninsula. I especially appreciated the detailed info on how to get around in Baja. The section on health in the front of the book came in handy after a small altercation with a manta ray! It was excellent for travelers on a budget. The descriptions of cities, places to stay and restaurants were all very accurate, but left enough room for our personal tastes to guide us to the spots that seemed especially fitting.

I felt as though once we arrived at our final destination there was a lot more there than was really covered in the book, but I guess they only have so many pages to work with!

This was the only book we brought with us, and it made for a great trip!

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Easily Readable But Lacking Correct Information, September 14, 2006

By 

Chris Luallen (Nashville, Tennessee) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Baja & Los Cabos (Lonely Planet Baja & Los Cabos) (Paperback)

My wife and me chose this LP guide for our recent trip to Baja Norte. I actually enjoyed Palmerlee's writing style and his side commentaries on the Baja music scene and other topics of interest. However, there were just too many cases of inaccurate information. For example, Palmerlee says a taxi from Ensenada to La Bufadora is about $12 when actually the round trip cost given to us by numerous taxi drivers was $40. He then says (correctly) that you can save money by taking a $1 bus to the town of Maneadora. But from there, he says, you must hitchhike to La Bufadora. The truth is, as we discovered by talking to the locals, you can easily catch another $1 bus from Maneadero to La Bufadora. Thus avoiding the hitchhiking which many people, including my wife, would not want to try.

Another problem was that the hotel recommendations were too often off the the mark. For example, at the highly recommended Hotel Los Pelicanos in Rosarito we were taken to a dark, dreary room by a very unfriendly hotel receptionist. Of course, we chose not to stay there.

I know that prices change and good places go bad. But still this book just had too many inaccuracies for me to recommend it. In fact, my wife started saying we should read what the Lonely Planet guide said and then do the opposite. I think this was probably a bit of an overstatement on her part. But still I'm sure this is the last thing LP wants to hear from it's readers. By the way, Lonely Planet is still my favorite publisher of travel guides. But hopefully the book we purchase for our next trip will provide better information.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars as comprehensive as a telephone directory..., October 9, 2002

By 

Philip Greenspun (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lonely Planet Baja California (Lonely Planet Baja & Los Cabos) (Paperback)

... and with about as much personality and selectivity. Like the Moon guide, a very useful book to have once you find yourself in Town X but not very useful for figuring out whether it would be better to plan a trip to Town X versus Town Y.