Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Bolivia (Country Travel Guide)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I come to Bolivia twice a year and over the past three years I have reviewed more than a dozen guides on Bolivia and this is the best guide available.

Lonely Planet guides are known for their no-nonsense, off-the-beaten-path advise. The descriptions of the towns and cities are top rate. Each area has its history and climate explained. This is one of the few guides that will give you the population and altitude of major cities and towns. Kudos!

The "must see" places are listed and explained. Trekking routes are explained and mapped! There are excellent descriptions of the seven geographical areas of Bolivia (Southern Altiplano, Central Highlands, Eastern Lowlands, Amazon Basin, etc.). The section on health is "top drawer" and needs to be read before traveling here. Sidebars, or text boxes, are found throughout the book and provide you with wonderful sources of miscellaneous information, i.e., "Bolivar - El Liberatador," "Traditional Andean Musical Instruments," etc., .

There are two other books that can enhance your time in Bolivia. The first is, William Powers' excellent and powerful account of living in Bolivia, "Whispering in the Giant's Ear" and Herbert Klien's, "A Concise Short History of Bolivia". In short, this is the most current(as of Sept. 2007) and best guide out. Strongly Recommended.

Lonely Planet guides are known for their no-nonsense, off-the-beaten-path advise, and their reliable hotel and restaurant recommendations. However, this guide does not come up to the quality level of the dozen or more Lonely Planet guides that I have reviewed.

There are various editing errors found in the guide. For example on page 27 the guide states: "Bolivia is thinly populated with just 1 million people". Wrong. Bolivia has nearly 9 million people.

Though this guide was published in 2004, most of the research was done in 2002. That means the information on accommodations and eateries is four years old and may not be reliable. For example, in Sucre, a delightful historic city, I went to nine of the twelve restaurants that Lonely Planet recommended. I found three of the restaurants permanently closed. In the other six restaurants, three had mediocre to bad food, and in the other three, the food was fair to good, but none of the restaurants had food that would justify a recommendation. The recommendations for accommodations were more useful than those for the restaurants.

The guide's section preparing you to journey to Bolivia (visas, health, getting there by air, etc.) is just bare-bones basic. Some of the maps in this guide are completely unusable, like the map for Sucre. The `Walking Tour Map' for La Paz is nothing short of a joke.

The strength of this guide is found in its excellent descriptions of the seven geographical areas the guide covers. Each area has its history and climate explained. This is one of the few guides that will give you the population and altitude of major cities and towns. Kudos! The descriptions of the towns and cities are top rate. The "must see" sights are listed and explained and you should attempt "to see" these places. The sidebars or text boxes found throughout the book, i.e., "Bolivar - El Liberatador," "Traditional Andean Musical Instruments," etc., are great sources of information.

In short, if you are not concerned about hotels, accommodations or needing good, reliable maps, then this guide, because of its excellent descriptions and history of each geographical area, is recommendable. Your best bet would be to use this guide as a supplement to either Pocket Adventures Bolivia (Strongly Recommended) or Footprint's guide on Bolivia.

Finally, also consider two additional books that can enhance your time in Bolivia. The first is, "Chasing Che" by Patrick Symmes and also excellent is Herbert Klien's, "A Concise Short History of Bolivia" (see my reviews on both).

Lonely Planet is generally a great source for guidebooks, but I'm not convinced the authors returned to Bolivia to do research for this updated edition. It seems as if they just slapped on a new cover and republished the previous edition.

The restaurant recommendations (if the restaurant recommended is even still open for business, that is) lean heavily on pizza and pasta places that cater to travelers, which is fine if you have traveled all the way to Bolivia to eat pizza with a bunch of German tourists in zip-off hiking pants, but not useful at all if you want an authentic experience.

I also had a Rough Guide to Bolivia during my 5-week trip around Bolivia and found that book to be a far superior resource to LP Bolivia. The Rough Guide never disappointed in terms of hotel, restaurant, and sight seeing recommendations.

This was the most recent guidebook for a trip to Bolivia for December 2004. (Rough Guide and Footprint were positively elderly.) I did also check out the Let's Go (2003) and Footprint (2002) from the library to bring along also. I ended up using all 3, which is to say none of the 3 had everything, and each of the 3 had some bit of useful info lacking in the others. The numbering to Sucre's map was off, as I recall (Let's Go was not much better, with south facing up and north facing down!). Also in Sucre one popular attraction (the dilapidated but worth-seeing La Glorieta mansion) was omitted in LP. I ended up using Footprint in Sucre. I found that hotels and dining that were cited in all 3 books were indeed highly recommendable. Lonely Planet seemed to have the most up to date info, which on occasion prevented some trouble. Aside from these serious errors, the 2004 Lonely Planet did definitely have a 'completely rewritten' feel as advertised. If these editorial errors could be fixed, it might just have edged out the competition. One positive it that it's thin but still manages to pack as much info as the thicker Footprint and the Let's Go (which was thick because it covers 2 other countries). None of the guides to Bolivia out there is a clear leader. Unfortunately, the best advice is to use at least 2 books in conjunction: Lonely Planet (or perhaps Let's Go) for currency and another of your choice. Maybe in 2005, some new edition will appear....

This book is nicely revised for the modern age as it quickly helps you make up your mind where to go in Bolivia by using photo highlights and sample itineraries. The advice on activities I found to be solid and reliable. Alas, the book suffers from several imperfections, such as listing places to stay and eat that no longer reflect the description and overly enthusiastic highlights and recommendations (the biggest bummer for me was the promise that Salar de Uyuni reflects the sky with "any amount of water in it" - not true, I paid for extra trip to see the Salar before and after a rain because of LP and then learned from my experience and the locals that the Salar fills up only in Jan/Feb during the height of the rainy season, but most of the year when it rains the place is just gray and gloomy...) You can address those imperfections by ignoring accommodation recommendations (just walk the street where you want to stay and ask to see the room before you check in - there are plenty of better and cheaper places to stay in Bolivia than the book mentions) and don't expect to see "Lonely Planet moments" anywhere you go (you will see some, if you have luck and good weather, but the sun does not shine every day even in Bolivia). Anyway, Bolivia is a great country to visit and the book was useful on my trip. Too bad it got stolen at an internet place in La Paz :(

I guess I have a bone to pick with this title, as I'm the author of at least 90% of the background information; I wrote the first four editions of this book, but failed to receive any author credit this time around. However, the newly inserted practical information seems to be solid, despite the fact that the new updater(s) lacked much time to put it together and Lonely Planet's new format dictated the deletion of lots of information that I'd consider both useful and entertaining - and in some cases essential. I'm sorry to see what has happened to 'my baby' (this was the first book I wrote for Lonely Planet), but that's through no fault of the current updater(s). In fact, I believe it's still the best available guide to Bolivia. Happy travels in that wonderfully enigmatic country!

A great overview of the country and certainly an essential companion to any trip to this underrated country. Food and festival entries are particularly good and help in any trip planning. Always impressed with the quality of LP publications and the recommendations were good.

The seventh edition of this classic has been updated. The info presented here is quite exact, the size of the guide is ideal, and it has been presented in a very straightfoward manner.
This is the closest you'll get to Bolivia...without travelling there :-)

Color highlights in each chapter and a green index identifying sustainable options accompanies a fine adventure-oriented guide for independent travelers to Bolivia. This seventh edition provides the latest advice from travel experts and is fully updated to provide the latest information on activities, regions, top itineraries, and more. A take-long 'must' for any Bolivia traveler!

Bolivia is a spectacular and seldom visited country and a guidebook is very helpful. This book offers lots of maps and travel recommendations, along with medical advice, history, customs, and the very popular "how to get there and away". Bolivia is not changing very rapidly, so the information tends to be quite reliable. The biggest problem with popular guidebooks is that many people read them, and the recommended hotels tend to be very crowded. I usually travel with one, and I think that this one is the best. But I always ask other travelers where they have stayed and what they have seen, and many of my best experiences have been because of word of mouth. A mixture of guidebook and going it on your own can be a very fun and adventurous way to travel, but keep the Lonely Planet handy.Dancing on the Edge of an Endangered Planet