Customer Reviews

Peru (Insight Guide Peru)

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

 

 

Insight Guides do not spare cash and effort on good photographs (some may say that there are too many photographs, which makes the guide too thick, too heavy and unusable for a traveller).

It is, however, more of a coffee-table book: try Frommer's, Rough Guide or Lonely Planet for practicalities. Insight Guide is not for carrying around (although maps are good).

You will find a lot of good reading about history, culture and mentality (which Rough Guide or Lonely Planet, with their dull and uninspired writing, cannot hope to match). However, there is sometimes an impression of missing focus: Peru is a beautiful country that has some obvious highlights and it is wrong to pretend (as the guide seems to) that the whole country is equally interesting.

If you want to travel to Peru, this is the guide that will bring you cultural information, history of the sacred sites, the people, villages, fiestas, as well as climate, major attractions, places to stay, and info on the coastal desert, highlands and jungle geography.
Beautiful full color pictures bring Peru to life, and a thorough index will guide you to just about anything you would want to know about this amazing place.
A great guide for planning, and learning!

Insight Guide Peru has one noticiable strenght by its side: This is probably the best source of deep background on specific destinations and activities. As a tour operator in Latin America I always recommend this particular guide when, for instance, travelers are deeply interested in bird watching in, say , the Manu Reserve in the peruvian amazon jungle, a less well known destination when comparing to Macchu Pichu, the Nazca Lines or Senor de Sipan.
Nevertheless, this level of detail is also available for the above mentioned "classic" destinies as well. Visually stunning, Insight Guide is the National Geographic of the Travel Guides.

Bart cat-travel

This is a beautiful, wonderfully illustrated book. I bought it, but didn't take it on my trip because friends were bringing along a copy. Even though we were on a tour, I found Danbury's "The Inca Trail: Cusco and Machu Picchu" a nice carry along. It's a good size and approaches Peru from a more "do-it-yourself" perspective.

In contrast, I look at the Insight Guide every day at home and thrill to the pictures and production quality. It is worth every penny and will stay in my house to remind me of an amazing place to visit.

Regardless of where you are going, you can never go wrong with insight guides. All the info you need. Plenty of maps. The great pictures is an added resource cause it gives you an idea and a feel for what the text is talking about. It shows you the beauty and possible places you will go because of what you've seen. Insight guides Peru is no different. Excellent resource.