Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Hawaii (4th ed)

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

 

 

On 5 trips to 4 of the islands, I've consistently found that this guidebook steers me in the right direction, and leads me to some out of the way places. The listing of B&B's & condos is extensive, if you are more interested in hotels, the Fromers guides have better listings. This book provides directions to some sights you would almost definitely miss otherwise. For example, on the drive to Hana there is a lovely swimming hole (with waterfall) about 30 meters from the road but with no signs leading to it. I would never have found this, and it was a higlight of the drive. Numerous other examples (this is one of the few books with details about Molokai), but the bottom line is that while most of the guidebooks list identical sights, this one goes into much more detail. If you are looking to lose the crowds and find some quiet places on your own, you need this book.

As always you can count on lonely planet to provide honest and useful information. I spent 6 months in Hawaii and this guide is definetly essential if you're planning a trip and want to avoid the most common tourist traps.

Lonely Planet is best for long trips because the reading and anecdotes are interested. For short trips when you are not sure what you want to see, it gives a fine general overview and good suggestions for restaurants. I felt that I saw everything I wanted to see and then some. The guidebook merely supplemented my trip just to make sure I caught the interesting points---which is exactly what a guidebook is for.

The Lonely Planet guides are overall good resources, but I am frustrated again and again at the lack of attention to aesthetics. Minimal photography, minimal maps, and sometimes deficient cultural/historical information. This is definitely *not* the best guidebook to Hawai'i, although it is adequate. I recommend strongly instead the "Insight Guide" instead.

Before investing in the LP Hawaii guidebooks, you should be aware that the authors do not live in Hawaii, nor are they the experts they claim to be. Unfortunately, their lack of local knowledge is readily apparent in this series from an otherwise high-quality publisher of travel reference books.

As a travel writer and Hawaii resident, I was dismayed to find an overabundance of inaccuracy in the Lonely Planet Hawaii guidebook. While it is realistic to expect some things to change between updates (prices, phone numbers), many things do not, such as driving directions and addresses. But aside from being poorly edited, I found even more troubling the authors' propensity for substituting ill-formed editorial opinion for knowledge of fact.

That all being said, the book might still be interesting if the authors' writing style demonstrated even a modicum of life. Instead, the tone is pedantic, more reminiscent of a community college lecture (or even an essay on what the authors' did during their summer vacation) than a definitive guidbook on traveling in Hawaii. I was left with the impression that the authors hadn't actually been to the islands, but that their research consisted of spending a night at the local library with a couple of <<good>> reference books.

And what's with the amateur photography by author Ned Friary? The poorly composed, low resolution images seem well suited for a neighbor's vacation slide show, but not what you'd expect from a benchmark travel reference.

My recommendation? Save your money and buy a couple of cocktails on the flight over instead.

The book contained extensive information about places to sleep eat, and things to do. I expected to find a map of the Napali coast track in the book "The best hike in the world" as printed in the book, but there was only a short explenation of what the trail was like.