Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet South America: On a Shoestring (Shoestring Travel Guide)

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

 

 

After reading a bunch of reviews, I noticed that all the reviews were written before April 2010. Well, this is a page for the new April 2010 edition.

Why doesn't Amazon account for this??

I just got back home this morning from spending 3 weeks in South America. All I can say is that this book was great for referencing things to do in different places, but the prices were off about a third of the time, and I wish it had more information about how to get to places. Luckily I knew enough Spanish to get around and double check with the locals. As far as the food goes, I'd say the recommendations are pretty good, having tried at least one place in each major city visited (applies only to Colombia and Peru), but don't forget to check with locals for good local authentic and cheaper food, so that you don't have to pay tourist prices for the food. The hostel recommendations were good; my only gripe is that they were almost always more than what the book said (perhaps they raised their prices after being published due to increased demand?) Overall a useful book, although a bit heavy to carry. If you're only going to 1 or 2 countries like me, just get the country book. If you're doing a multi country trip over many months as most of the backpackers I met were doing, this book is great to cover many things, but perhaps try buying the .pdf version too! Trust me, the weight off your back will be wonderful when you're on the road. :)

I have purchased about eight Lonely Planet books, and this one is probably the weakest. Maps and info sometimes wrong, info unclear, prices way off (used it just months after reprint date) leading me to assume some of this info is many years old, etc. Some of the accomodation recommendations were just outright awful, particularly in Canao Quebrada in Brazil. i would recommend the Footprints book over this one. However, here are the LP pluses. I did make a few awesome boxed recommendations, namely Astrid y Gaston restaurant in Peru and Sete Cidades in Brazil. If you get this book, I would just recommend getting Footprints or another to completment.

Overall, I found the basic information in this book to be useful and accurate (I purchased the 2010 edition). However, I felt the book really played up the negative aspects of all of the countries in South America. I planned on spending at least a month of my sabbatical in South America, but ended up changing my plans before I went because of this book. I ran into another traveler from the US on my trip who had the same book and asked him what he thought about the book. His response was, 'I feel like I am lucky to be alive and have made it this far because of all the warnings in this book'. I told him I wholeheartedly agreed.

Now, don't get me wrong, it is good to know the negatives of all of the places you will visit! I want to know that I shouldn't take unmarked cabs and that the border patrol is very likely going to steal everything of value from my luggage. However, the warnings in this book had me paranoid and quite frankly, afraid. I would say that I am a well traveled person and live in a large city, so maybe this book wasn't meant for me. Based on the title of the book, it might be more appropriate for people who have never traveled before, backpackers. If you are a fairly confident, well versed traveler, I would consider another book. If this is your first time traveling anywhere, this might be the book for you. I am sure that all of the stories in the book have happened, luckily, I didn't experience any of them.

Incidentally, I can't wait to go back to South America, but I will be using a different book.

Sent this email to Lonely Planet (and never got any response):

I recently bought the Kindle edition of South America on a Shoestring and I have some complaints about this book.

Besides the fact that a lot of information was inaccurate (I will submit this separately), I believe the Kindle edition was too hard to use (and in many cases unusable) for the following reasons:

1) The maps in the Kindle edition are HORRIBLE. The maps are cut up in various pieces (because they otherwise would not fit the screen) but this also means that the legends are randomly cut up as well and are mostly impossible to use. LP should have redesigned the maps for the Kindle but since it hasn't done this I found the maps useless. In some cases the cut up maps were scattered throughout a chapter making it impossible to easily navigate between them.

2) The navigation options are extremely limited and frustrating to use. "Table of Contents" always goes back to the main table and there is no option to go to a TOC of the current chapter/country. There should be a lot more links inside a chapter to navigate quickly to other pages in the chapter, e.g.: you could have a link on each page to the country TOC + a link to the map section.

3) Bookmarks are useless: since a Kindle bookmark only shows a limited amount of text + a location number, it is impossible to know which bookmarks is for which chapter or country. I understand this is a Kindle limitation but something that LP should try to address with Amazon.

All in all I found the Shoestring Kindle book very hard to use and very limited compared to a real book. Since it costs about the same I feel I overpaid and in retrospect feel that I shouldn't have bought this book at all.

the product was in a perfect condicion and it was shipped in a good time! I recommend it widely. Thank you!

This book is as good as all the other Lonely Planets. The detail on the many different countries is very extensive.

South America on a Shoestring: Big Trips on Small Budgets appears in its 30th updated edition to highlight itineraries and picks on South American destinations. Backpackers and trekkers will find here a handy guide written by experts and packed with accurate advice on the latest South America destinations. Highly recommended for any library strong in independent traveler's guides.

The book is great, I cant wait to take it with me to South America in the fall.