Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Argentina (Country Travel Guide)

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

 

 

We relied on the August 2010 edition for our 3-week visit to Argentina in October 2010. We met travelers from Canada and Ireland with the same August edition! It's packed with facts, very good comments and advice. Our trip went as planned, with no major surprises. Prices were higher than listed.
The maps have fine print, black and white, and are hard to use. Buenos Aires has several neighborhood maps that are good to locate something in a neighborhood, but the neighborhood fragments are hard to assemble into a unified city view.

I just returned from a month-long trip to Argentina in July 2010. The newest Lonely Planet Argentina isn't coming out until September 2010 so we travelled with the older version. Although the guide has a warning about price increases, I was shocked to find almost every price quoted in the book to be about 40-50% higher than written. I do understand that prices in Argentina have skyrocketed in the past 10 years, but perhaps Lonely Planet should have researched a new edition sooner. The huge increase in prices almost doubled the budgeted cost of our trip.

That being said, I do feel the place and attraction descriptions were accurate and it was a good source of basic information from which to start researching where we wanted to go. The maps and addresses were accurate.

It has a HUGE Buenos Aires section, but we didn't spend much time there during the month so I can't honestly evaluate that section. We did have significant difficultly making reservations in Buenos Aires because at least 5 of the places listed in the book were full.

This guidebook also has a significant, more accurate, and well-written section on Uruguay. Although I am not sure why they didn't name it "Argentina and Uruguay" since Uruguay is another country, not a region of Argentina. My friends in Uruguay were quite insulted by this and felt it was "typical arrogant Argentine behavior". The information in the Uruguay section was more accurate that the info in the Argentina section.

Lastly, I felt the lodging and attractions listings were mostly geared toward travellers ages 18-25. We are a family travelling with two children, and often felt it hard to find affordable places to stay that weren't party hostels among the listings in the book. We even made reservations and paid a deposit at a place in Iguazu and found out once we arrived that they don't allow children! It would have been nice to read that ahead of time in the book. And I felt that there were very few activities and things to see that were geared toward families. Surely they exist!

Excellent travel guide. I highly recommend it. As an additional bonus Uruguay is included and helpful information on nearby parts of Brazil as well.

This books provides a good overview of Argentina, but if you want to research details about certain cities, you will need to buy another more specialized book or do some research online. I think the book provides the basics and serves as a good starting point as a visitor starts planning her trip to Argentina.

Im sure the authors of this book were well paid by Argentina's Dept of Tourism because the book just spouts nonstop about how exhilarating, astounding and mind blowing this country is that they somehow neglect to put in any actual information what the country is really like. Im a budget traveler who relies a lot of Lonely Planet guides to provide real "on the street" information on how to get by in these countries. This book just unloads tourist trap information you could pull off the rack of any travel agency.

This book is everything it says it is and MORE!! Any country I visit in the future I will always buy the lonely planet version for that particular country.

I will be taking this on our trip to Argentina, but very helpful just to read and figure out where we want to go.

I'm going to Argentina. Really, I am. I didn't know it till I got this guide, but having lived with it for a while, I know I'm going. My next vacation is going to be on the road in Argentina. I'm going to rent a car and see the country. I'm going to get up close with penguins. I'm going to see the Andes. I'm going to see all the sights Argentina has to offer.

Having read this book. And I mean having read it, not just flipping though the pages and looking at it a bit here and there, I feel inspired, but before I go, I'm going to have to get a new copy, because this one has a broken spine, because I've had it propped open a bit too hard during one too many breakfasts. And it's a bit heavier then when I first got it, because I've dropped it in the bath and even though I spent a long time blow drying the pages, it's just different now.

But it still reads just fine, so I still pour over the city maps, still read about the shopping, the countryside, the roads less traveled. And I feel I'm really getting to know those roads as this book has almost become my Bible. I read this book at work. I read it during the news, during commercials, before I fall asleep. I dream of Argentina.

When I got this guide I didn't plan on being inspired. I just thought it would be fun to learn a bit about a country I'd never been to. I didn't plan on it becoming an obsession. But it did. Fortunately travel is a good thing to obsess about, a good thing to save for to plan for and if you're planning a trip to Argentina, don't think twice, invest in this terrific guide. You'll be glad you did. I think so anyway.

This is a great book to have traveling in Argentina, we used in for our four week tour and found it very helpful in finding hotels through out the country. However I wouldn't buy it from a certain site that feels that even though they do business in California they don't want to pay any taxes. Do you think that is fair? For that reason I have to rate the book low unless you find another source, in which case I would rate it 5 stars