Customer Reviews

Footprint South American Handbook 2006

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

 

 

I am comparing this book to its primary competitor Lonely Planet South America.....

Pros to Footprint:

1.)Up to date; as of this writting Lonely planet had not updated their south america guide for about 2 years, footprint is very uptodate

2.)Most content: at over 1700 pages this book has the most content

Negatives:

1.) Not well written. I find this book very confusing, Lonely Planet is 4 or 5 times easier to use...Footprint is very vague on doing basic things like taking a bus from one town to next, and hard to plot a route to follow..

2.)Paper quality....I know this is a minor thing, but Footprint used very cheap paper, and it is hard to turn pages...also almost no photographs in this book, so you better have good imagination ;)

Personally, if I had to choose only one guide I would choose Lonely Planet, but this is perhaps a good supplement.....I haven't really looked at any of the Fodor books.....

There is a lot of information in the guide book and it is up to date. There is information on major cities and smaller, less travelled places. There are a lot of hotel recommendations, more than in any other guide book.

These are the good sides of the guide book, but there are also some seroius lacks. The maps are bad and there are less maps than in other guide books. The basic information on sights is difficult to browse. There is no background information on sights. There are no highlightened sights. The prices are quoted in USD, not in local currency. There is no information for gay travellers.

If you are planning to travel widely in Brazil consider other guide books. The Brazilian section is the worst one!

Still the most experienced, complete, objective, relevant, orderly, up-to-date guide book on South America, with the clearest maps since 2005. Fine paper makes it compact too.

The Footprint Peru 2005, an annotated photocopy of it, Footprint South America 2005 & 2004, Footprint Ecuador, Peru & Bolivia 2005, & Footprint Central America & Mexico have all been stolen from our library during 2005, while various competitors books have been left behind by travellers.

Most competitors books appear only once in 4 years & are hopelessly out of date for most of that time.

This book totally fulfilled what I was expecting, meaning an infinity of detailed technical information about nearly all places of interest in the whole continent. Hence, if you are looking for a very complete list of hotels, restaurants, museums, travel agencies etc. this is the perfect book. However, this book can't possibly, and is not meant to provide any but the very basic background information about history, language, culture, politics etc. As long as you don't expect something like a classical travel guide and rather view this as a "manual" buy it but consider to complement it with additional background information where needed.

The Handbook reads better than ever. In print since 1924, and known as the bible to South America, the new South America guide provides reliable information. The handbook profiles national parks and of special note is the "Responsible Tourism" essay that the book pioneered in 1992.

I packpacked to Argentina & Rio de Janiero with this guide book and it has everything that I need.