Customer Reviews

Frommer's Best Hiking Trips in Hawaii

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I visited 4 islands (6 weeks) and did numerous trails, including some quite strenuous ones.

Forget the Frommer's guide, it's a waste of money:

1. Some of the best trails I did are not in there. I had one German guidebook (for all islands) and for each island one from the revealed series (Oahu etc. revealed). The latter showed me the best spots.
2. The trail maps are, friendly speaking, sub-standard. The look like the routes were drawn in zoomed google street maps: often next to no detail shown, i.e. you see more or less a blank page with a route superimposed!! I guess this is why despite many pages to view in the online preview on amazon (or google books), you will not find a single trail description with map! It shows they are quite aware of their lousy maps. I have never seen anything like that in a trail book.
3. The trails are rated with stars: that's a great idea and a plus! But: I did one of the top rated trails and have absolutely no idea, why this trail had a good rating. I guess the problem is that the ratings have no description explaining what's great about the trail. Maybe they have seen something I did not see - maybe there was something I should have looked for. I don't know, because the trail description does not say why it is supposed to be a great trail. For me it was a waste of time, caused by the Frommer's trail book.
4. It contains trails which do not belong into a trail book. Example: Akaka Falls Trail, Big Island. Every travel book and every free map you get on the island point out the falls, they are hard to miss. At the parking lot, there is a fix stable trail with hand rails left and right and no other place to go that brings you in 20-30 minutes in a loop round and passing the falls. Why is this in a hiking book?? You can't miss it, and you don't need a trail description (and wearing high heels are fine to use on this trail, too). I accidentally came across that description after I had visited the falls. Well, maybe the guide book is trying to substitute for a normal travel guide book? After all, it also contains places to eat and drink. But for a travel guide book, it misses lots of really relevant stuff - thus, if this is the intention, the desaster is complete.

My recommendation now that I've been there would be to not buy any extra hiking guide. I had the "island xy revealed" guides and was quite happy with the hiking I found there. Frommer's additional value to that was zero.