Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Africa (Multi Country Travel Guide)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As someone who just returned from a solo tour(via local buses, trains and hitch-hiking) through Botswana, Zambia and Namibia with this book in my pack I feel I can review it more fairly than those who have simply looked it over while dreaming about a future trip.

While no single book can give an indepth look at every country, this one gives you all the information you need to travel through Africa on a budget. Best of all it is small enough to fit in your pack and well built enough to make it through the trip in one piece. I will be going back next year and this book will be coming along.

As you can guess, with only about twenty five pages per country, some info is glossed over or left out all together. Due to space constraints Lonely Planet left out some of the "where to go and what to see" advice but they made sure to include all the information relevant to transportation and lodging. If you need more indepth information you should buy one of the individual guides that cover each country you plan to visit along with Africa on a Shoestring.

My one gripe with this book is that it seems a bit too focused on the backpacker/camper type lodging. I personally prefere to travel like the locals and stay in guest-houses and cheap hotels and at times this book skips right over this information. The worst way to save three dollars a night is to pitch a tent on the ground instead of booking into a local guest house. When you stay at one of the urban campsites the only "culture" you are going to experience is provided by the young, loud, drunken tourists. Not my idea of fun.

If you are looking for a book that will make traveling in Africa trouble free you are going to be disspointed, that book does not exist and never will. In Africa almost nothing is easy and that includes travel. But that is part of the adventure.

If you want to see Africa without all the hassle then you need to talk to one of the travel agents who offer all inclusive tours for small groups in large overland trucks. You will get some nice photos but you won't really be traveling "in" Africa, you will be traveling "over" it, and you don't need any book for that.

I was traveling with the LP Africa on a Shoestring 6 months ago. I purchased this new edition to see how LP has updated it and I'm not impressed. I don't think they did much for the Southern Africa section except remove a few things like places to stay and cities that they didn't feel tourists would get to (ex: Barra in Mozambique, Nata and Ghanzi in Botswana). Don't even think about just taking this book when you're traveling (and I have seen travelers with only this book!). If you're planning just to do Southern Africa and/or East Africa, get the books LP has out for these two regions because they will be more detailed and meet friends along the way for more recent advice/info. I was surprised to find that some of the places I visited and enjoyed in Southern Africa were no longer in the new edition. The general country info and other advice in this book are still as good as the last edition (with more current events added) and I recommend it to anyone thinking about doing a multi-country trip to Africa. It is great for planning your travel destinations.

Anthony Ham's AFRICA packs in over 250 detailed small maps and is the only guide for independent travelers to cover the entire continent. Fast facts, tips on where to see local culture and wildlife alike, and plenty of town-by-town descriptions for accommodations, food and more make this a thick but welcome take-along tote. Travel collections will find this a popular pick.

Lonely Planet is the leader in travel books. This isn't just my opinion, I've met many other travelers who won't go anywhere without the appropriate LP book. Africa on a Shoestring is a great guide, with information on places to stay and what to see, for travelers who don't want to spend a fortune and aren't afraid to get out and actually experience the local culture.

That being said, I'm really disappointed in parts of this book. As the market leader, LP should be able to keep its books properly updated. Yet many country sections start with: "We were unable to do on-the-ground research in (country_name), so some information in this chapter may not be reliable". While this is understandable in someplace like Liberia or Cote d'Ivoire where the national security situation is volatile, it's inexcusable for countries like Nigeria. Yes, there are some problem areas in Nigeria, and Lagos can indeed be chaotic. But Nigeria is not Lagos. And Nigeria is not the Niger Delta. I certainly hope that they manage to update some of these chapters for the next edition.

In the interest of full disclosure, here are the countries LP didn't bother to update for this edition: Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, Congo-Brazzaville, CAR, Congo-Kinshasa, Burundi, Somalia, Angola. Libya is listed as potentially being partially unreliable.

If you're traveling to Africa, my advice is to get this book _and_ the Rough Guide to whatever region of Africa you're going to. If you're going somplace that LP's book doesn't cover, look for a specific book that covers it. My last bit of advice for Africa travelers is to roll with the punches. There aren't nearly as many folks going to Africa as there are to Europe, so the information on Africa isn't as cutting-edge new. That hotel you read about and planned on staying in tonight? It burned down six months ago. But there are always other options, so just relax and take it easy.

I applaud LP for taking on the challenge of a book that covers the entire continent, but it's just too much for one book. I bought it in order to piece together an itinerary, but it doesn't do a good job in linking the countries together. Under the "suggested itineraries" it really just says it will depend on your money and time (uh, thanks, no kidding) and then tells you where NOT to go (Congo, Sierra Leone, etc)

The newest version is at least clumps groups of countries together. Mine is just a year old and has the countries in alpha order.

I would suggest buying the smaller books (LP East Africa, etc) instead.

It took so much to get there and I found it very comforting having this book to entice me along. Yes it was pretty general but it left us open to meeting people and having more excuses to dig for directions. Many times we were invited into people's homes, the ones that spoke English and French. I always prefer roughing it to clean ironed sheets and air conditioned rooms. Anglin writes well and although there are some holes, there's no book out there that is better for seeing the raw Africa.

This is a very disappointing book.The countries are not really covered.One cannot have an overview of Africa by reading this book.Too many pages are unnecessarily spent on the standard features like visas,places to stay in the capitals,dangers,etc. Furthermore, mostly big towns are covered.There are no references to the indigenous cultures of each country,no indication of the comparative merits of each place within each country,and,above all,no comparison of the various countries--so one cannot decide which are the best countries to visit.Finally,most countries are presented in a positive light,as if each writer set out to compete with the rest,which does not help at all.Books of this sort,that cover many countries,must help the reader decide which countries are worth visiting and which are not,something that this book utterly fails to do--an excellent example of a book that succeeds in this,but from another part of the world,is Moon's "South Pacific".

So out of date!! Several countries do not seem to have any presence on the ground. The email sources don't go anywhere, and Lonely Planet's web site has no further info. Much of the how-to comes from the U.S. State Department's web site.

I did not travel with this book, in fact, I have not gone to Africa yet (except for Morocco and Egypt).

However, I think this guide is very good for planning the trip, routes, which countries to visit and which ones to leave out.

Since it includes every country on the continent (even the 3 areas of Somalia) it provides a general idea of what to expect in each country and what might be of interest for you. It also let's you compare country by country, although given the size of the book every chapter contains somewhat limited information about them.

The bottom line is this: In my opinion, it is a very good book, and I guess it is useful depending on how much information you might want during your trip. If you want to have everything in control, I suggest you to buy this book to plan ahead and then buy a regional one (or a country guide) with more information, to go with. Otherwise, if you are a little bit of and adventurer, grab this one and discover the continent.

I have lots of guidebooks - and lots of Lonely Planets, for that matter. But despite the fact that they say they are for "independent travellers", I keep finding ridiculous reviews on restaurants and hotels, to the point where I've stopped using them.

The History, Snapshot, and similar sections are great, but if you have a brain of your own - use it. Forget their restaurant and hotel recommendations, as I'm not even sure they visit the places. Sometimes they have history or comments on places that is worthwhile to read, though. All tourbooks may have these drawbacks, to be fair.

Finally, I think I'm going to stop buying Lonely Planet's, though. First, they always act like driving is so scary everywhere, when it's actually quite easy to anyone with a brain. They also forget to give worthwhile tips on getting a car, etc. (Yes, I realize that this one is "on a shoestring, but I'm speaking in general terms here). I imagine that this is their way of "saving the Earth". To a person who does care about the Earth, but doesn't believe that being a dirty hippie is going to save anything, this - and all their other BS trying to coerce their opinions onto you as fact - gets really freakin' old. Yes, yes, I know, LP is founded by some hippie freak from AUS or something - whooptie doo. That doesn't mean I have to pay some jerk who's going to push his politics on me, whether I agree with them or not.