Moon Spotlight Guatemala City and Antigua [Paperback]

Al Argueta (Author)

Book Description

Series: Moon Spotlight | Publication Date: February 1, 2009

Moon Spotlight Guatemala City and Antigua is an 80-page compact guide covering the gateway city of Guatemala and neighboring La Antigua. Author Al Argueta offers his seasoned advice on what sights are must-see and includes a map with sightseeing highlights so planning your time is easy. This lightweight guide is packed with recommendations on sights, entertainment, shopping, accommodations, food, and transportation. Helpful maps make navigating Guatemala City and Antigua uncomplicated.


Moon Spotlight guides are affordably-priced, lightweight guides covering a smaller geographic region than Moon Handbooks or Outdoors guidebook series. The travel content in a Spotlight guide is pulled directly from individual chapters of larger Handbooks or Outdoors titles, with no introductory information (such as When to Go or Planning Your Trip), and no indexes. The results are compact guides to popular destinations that provide travelers with what they need to explore a specific locale in depth with fewer pages of very focused information.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Avalon Travel Publishing; 1 edition (February 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1598802658
• ISBN-13: 978-1598802658
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #179,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #6 in Books > Travel > Caribbean > Antigua and Barbuda
  • #13 in Books > Travel > Latin America > Central America > Guatemala

More About the Author

At the age of three, Al Argueta first traveled to Guatemala with his father. He was utterly captivated by the country's landscape and its Mayan inhabitants. He would later live in Guatemala for two years, allowing him to formally learn Spanish and to experience Guatemala's culture firsthand. During summers in high school and college, Al would take a month off and travel to Guatemala to explore its jungles, Mayan ruins, and villages.

In college, Al majored in Journalism and Latin American Studies, managing to squeeze in two study-abroad programs in Manchester and Maastricht. He also traveled through much of Europe. After college, he interned with Costa Rica's Tico Times, getting his first exposure to travel writing and photography, in addition to covering then-President Bill Clinton's visit to Guatemala. Al worked briefly for a newspaper in the Virgin Islands before moving on to photography school in Hawaii. He also taught English to college students in Thailand for a time, continuing to satiate the travel bug that bit him years back.

Al now lives in Austin, Texas, where he's managed to stay put in one place for an unprecedented five years. In addition to writing, he does freelance travel photography for clients that have included National Geographic Adventure, US Airways, Caribbean Travel & Life, Condé Nast Traveler, Outside's GO, and Continental. Guatemala is still his favorite place to photograph. His website is www.alargueta.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars expected more detail, March 12, 2010

By 

Angela Evans (Toledo, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Moon Spotlight Guatemala City and Antigua (Paperback)

If you are going to Guatemala, just buy the full travel guide. This little book is pulled directly from that travel guide. There is no in-depth coverage of Antigua and Guatemala City. If you have have read or used Moon Guatemala, this is the same thing with 80 pages torn out and put into its own book. The description alludes to this fact. If a book is going to be a spotlight of a city, I would hope the author would do more to detail the intracies of the city(ies). Moon really only gives a cursory overview as it is and Antigua and Guatemala City are two locations that could merit extensive details. While the book is light and easy to tote around, I would just buy the full guide for a few dollars more. If you are going to Guatemala, you are going to want to experience more than Antigua.