Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Belize (Country Guide)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

How to rank this book depends upon what you are looking for. In my case, I've been using Lonely Planet guides for many years and am accustomed to their assistance for traveling on a real budget. This book was different in that it focused much more on the mid-range of travel, and was really lacking on the budget end. For example, it assumes that you will use a tour and tour guide to visit many archeological sites instead of pulling it off using public transportation and your feet. And the least expensive hotels are often not covered.
ON THE PLUS SIDE, there are a lot of Americans traveling in Belize and they seem to be largely staying in the nicer hotels and using tours. For them, this book is more than adequate and easily recommended. For those who are really budget travelers, I'd suggest "The Rough Guide to Belize", which I ended up borrowing from other travelers.

Bravo Lonely Planet!

This is an EXCELLENT book for planning your Belize Vacation.
Lonely Planet took the time to send their writers to Belize, and they traveled all over the country including they Cayes. All the information in the book is current and hits the nail right on the head!

While Belize is still a very ecomonical place to vacation, Belize is not as cheap as some other Central American countries. From my experiences, Belize is the cheapest place to vacation in the Caribbean, but the most expensive in Central America. So if you are looking for a vacation that offers you amazing adventures like Mayan Ruins and Cave Tubing and you are also looking for incredible snorkeling, diving, or windsurfing, then Belize is your perfect destination.

Thank you Lonely Planet for getting the information right! Belize has changed A LOT in the past few years, and Lonely Planet knows Belize!!!

Wendy
Caye Caulker, Belize

As always, the Lonely Planet guide is well-structured with key features such as bus schedules. This particular guide was hit-and-miss with its information, however. Lodging prices were out-of-date (not just seasonally); the Tropical Education Center's prices have nearly doubled. The biggest problem is the outright-misinformed notion that Belize's dry season starts in November; every Belizean told me that it always starts in January or February, hence water levels were still high in Crooked Tree and wildlife was scarce during my February trip. Several towns and locations of interest were left out, forcing me to buy the Rough Guide. Although the Rough Guide reads like a novel and not so much a field guide, it has more information than the Lonely Planet guide. This was the first trip where nobody I met was using the LP guide.

I purchased three Belize guide books, and this was by far the best!
The New Key to Belize(1994) and Hidden Belize(2001) had outdated and duplicate information(word for word!)

Buy the Lonely Planet Book, you will not be disappointed!

Hopelessly out of Date - Do yourself a favor and skip this travel guide - jump straight to the Rough Guide to Belize The Rough Guide to Belize 5th (fifth) edition Text Only. We just returned from a month in Belize (July & August 2011) and the Lonely Planet Guide is a waste of time. And, is not time for Lonely Planet to provide a truly useful Index? We all know that Lonely Planet's Index has been and remains quixotic. If you want to investigate a particular site, hotel, shop, or restaurant, you must first already know what district in which to find what you are looking for. Well, if it your first time to Belize, how are you supposed to know this information? Yes, LP does provide maps to help you sort all this out, by why do we have to bother? Rough Guide is a much more intuitive and thus highly user-friendly. While we are on the subject of maps, the LP maps contained within the Belize guide are just barely useful. Why do we have to buy an additional LP map kit?

I have been a great fan of Lonely Planet and have bought dozens of their guides over the years. When there were very few choices of useful guides, LP was the way to go. But, now the choice is clearly the Rough Guide series.

Just back this morning from a 4 day first time trip to Belize.
I have used the Lonely Planet guides for other countries so when I was planning a trip to Belize from Guatemala City, I tried to find another guide. I was getting tired of misinformation, incomplete maps, and snarky comments of the authors. I didn't find anything, so I ended up with the LP guide again. Most things were helpful, but others were misleading. For example, I really enjoy carved wooden pieces so I followed the LP's advice to visit the Hattieville Prison gift shop. In the book it talks about the high quality items for sale as well as the great variety of pieces carved by the inmates and sold in the shop. There were only about 10 items on display, they were poorly crafted and overpriced. I feel like I wasted a whole morning of my short trip on a wild goose chase.

Some of the maps were incomplete and it's frustrating when you're trying to find something and all you get is a little arrow at the edge of a map with a distance notation. Come on! How hard would it be to add a few more map pages? Cut some of those little information boxes out. They're a waste of space anyway. I wish Fodor's was available here. Next time I'm back in the states, I'm grabbing a copy.

I am a planner freak, so I used this book and Frommers. I ended up relying on the Frommers as it was more detailed, more accurate with pricing, and included alot of stuff LP didn't.

LP is outdated, and it only had general information about Belize....not as specific as Frommers.

This guide is the worst e-guide I have ever seen. There are no page numbers. The index doesn't give locations where you can find the topic and index titles ARE NOT interactive. How are you supposed to find the items listed? The Rough guide is much better. You can follow along the road you are traveling--much like the AAA triptychs plus many of the accommodations and points of interest are interactive. Rough is best.

I have used Lonely Planet for many trips and have found the guidebooks helpful in the past. This one however does not have one single listing for lodging or restaurant. Frankly this is what I bought it for. The book has nice information for someone who is THINKING about going to Belize (culture, infrastructure etc) but not for someone who has already done some homework. I have been to Belize 3 years ago and gave my guide book away so I just wanted to get an updated one with lodging and restaurant listings and this one has neither. A complete and total waste of my money. I'm not quite sure what the point of this one is.
I wanted to note that this was the kindle edition I had purchase so maybe the actual paper one is different.

The information in this book is out dated and should not be on the market...there is a new one coming out that you should wait and purchase.