Customer Reviews

Peru: The Rough Guide, First Edition (3rd ed (Rough Guide))

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

 

 

This is a very good guide. After using it for one month in Peru, I was impressed by the solid and pertinent information that this guide supplied.

The guide has three sections: "The Basics," "The Guide" and "The Context." "The Basic" section, which was solid and concise, provides all of the primary travel information that you will need before traveling. "The Guide" section breaks Peru down into six major regions. Each region is extremely well laid out and the standard information for each town or city (accommodations, eating places, sites to see, etc.) is accurate and reliable. "The Context" section is good reading - it handles history, Inca life, music, books, ecology, indigenous rights and the destruction of the rain forest.

Good Guides should have good maps and lots of them. Peru: The Rough Guide does not disappoint - 59 well-drawn maps give you a solid initial orientation. Outstanding are the multiple sidebars chocked full of meaningful - and practical - information about all aspects of the culture you're visiting, which is the hallmark of Rough Guides.

Not helpful was the accommodation pricing codes, 1-8 each representing a price range. More useful is the price grouping used for restaurants: Budget, Moderate and Expensive. Overall, you can't go wrong with this top drawer guide. Highly Recommended.

If you are looking for a travel book, that gives you good descriptions of a tourist site, perhaps this Rough Guides would be a good choice. I didn't read too many of those since I would get a guide usually at a tourist site, but then I sure could see that the descriptions are long and detailed.

But if you are backpacker who is looking for a travel guide that has the correct address/location of a hotel where you plan to spend the night when you reach Arequipa at 8pm, this is certainly not the reliable guide! Well not to mention that in Lima my first two choices of hostals did not have correct location in the map in the book. And then in Trujillo the hotel I chose to go to was shut down...and where really was that creolle restaurant that the book recommended and I wanted to hit that night. And the story goes on - Well sometimes they wouldn't have correct address, and more often than that they would not have the correct location on the map..
You know being off by a couple of blocks matters sometimes ( you just reach a new city, its night, you are alone and tired and want to hit a hostal and sleep).

SO yes since the book was unreliable when I needed it the most, its good points like great long descriptions of sites got overshadowed.

Nothing in this book is up to date. The prices are all incorrect and the descriptions of some places and things are just plain wrong. This book almost ruined my trip to Peru. Stay Away From It!!! I bought it in the first place because I loved the rough guide to Tanzania, and trusted that the guide to Peru would be just as good. I just don't know why Rough Guides allowed this tragedy to be published.

I used the third edition of this book on a trip two weeks after it was published. But I found that much of the information was less reliable and up-to-date than in the Frommer's guide, which is about a year older. Examples: the information on Perurail never mentioned the fact that it is now owned by Orient Express, and is mostly a luxury service with changed schedules, increased prices, and some discontinued lines. And in Ollantaytambo (not a town with a lot of hotels to choose from) this guide didn't mention the three-year old Hotel Pakaritampu, whereas Frommer's correctly identified it as the nicest hotel in town. The reviews of other hotels and restaurants also turned out to be less reliable and useful than Frommer's. This guide does have much good background information on Peru's history and people, and has good maps of the cities. We ended up using this book mostly for background reading and used the Frommer's guide more for practical information.

I'm surprised by the negative reviews of this book.

While staying in a great hostel (that did happen to be recommended in this book)two of my roommates traveling together begged me to let them keep my Rough Guide To Peru 6. They were carrying Lonely Planet.

Also, while traveling with friends whom I had met carrying different Peru guides (LP included) I always was curious to read how various guides wrote-up a Peru site that I had visited already. With limited exceptions, I felt the Rough Guide to be superior. (I never ran across anyone with a Moon guide and I used them in Costa Rica and was very impressed).

To address some of the negative reviews - I do agree that some things are out-of-date. For example in Arequipa a highly recommended vegetarian restaurant had closed down months earlier. But this happens, no guide book can be perfect; there's always a time lag.

And about hostels - I heard anecdotes from LP toting travelers that they kept running into the same travelers city after city because they simply go to the hostels LP recommends. That's fine, but I'd start to feel like I'm on a package tour. Only as a last resort do I rely on guide book recommendations for accommodation. The internet, as we all know, is by far a better resource for this.

Although some of the reccomendations were excellent, other reccomended restaurants or lodgings were closed or did not seem to exist. This was not a problem with the Lonely PLanet or Moon guidebooks. I had the annoying experience of trying to go to eat at a place reccomended by this guide book and then finding out it did not exist or was closed. I wish the editors spent more time verifying that their reccomended places were still open and in the same locations on the publication date. The maps and side information were decent.

I would definitely go with the Peru guidebooks from Lonely PLanet, Moon, or Let's Go over this guide.

Having what I referred to as my "Blue book" I traveled from Lima to Paracas to Nasca to Cuzco to Machu Picchu to Lake Titicaca and Ariquipa. This book was HEAVEN SENT. We never had to worry about which restaurant to eat in or which hotel would be clean.

We are already planning the next trip which will include Iquitos and Machu Picchu again! I won't need any other books. I have my "blue book!"

Thank You!

I've always liked Rough Guides. I just got back from Peru and used it extensively there. I also lived in Guatemala for a year, and it was very helpful. I will say, though, that the guide sometimes lacks in the food area, and gives less options for places to stay than I'd like. I also prefer having prices listed, as well as addresses (prices are in the back or sometimes not included). What I DO like are the special tips, maps, transportation info, and guides of things to do. The history and basic info about cities is usually informative and well-written.

My suggestion: My boyfriend brought a Lonely Planet and I brought the Rough Guide. What you can't get from one, you can always get from the other!

soft cover, 8x5", approx 450 pages. Standard tourist info, generally organized by region. A few B&W maps of regions, city centers, and archeological sites. Virtually no pictures of any kind. I view it as one resource to help fill in the details. I'd take Peru Handbook by Alan Murphy with me for as a reference, leave this one at home. If you're spending the money to go to Peru, I'd buy this and the other 3 mentioned below. If you're just armchair travelling, Lonely Planet Peru at least has good pictures, and text info to match this book. I had no use for references for food & lodging, was on an organized tour. also reviewed: Peru Handbook by Alan Murphy; Lonely Planet Peru & Insight guides Peru.

I really enjoyed the tone of this book, it was full of excellent background information (history, customs, etc.). What I found lacking (a problem I have not encountered with other rough guides) was a lack of details. Many bus companies were left out, and some of the maps were difficult to follow. I do not know spanish and felt very dependent on a guide book. The Lonely Planet had many of the details I felt the Rough Guide lacked, but I would really prefer to use the Rough Guides.