Customer Reviews

Puerto Rico Off the Beaten Path, 3rd: A Guide to Unique Places

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

 

 

If you're planning a trip to PR and you are interested in being more adventuresome than lying on the beach in San Juan, this book is a great resource. It covers several different trip options around the island. Had I not purchased it we would have never made it to the parts of the island which we did and would have had a far less enjoyable vacation. Also the restaurants that were hi-lighted were extremely helpful in making the trip more enjoyable.

As a child, My wife lived in Puerto Rico for several years and thought she was familiar with the Island enough to not need another travel guide. We bought it anyway with a little reservation. Much to our surprise, what an AMAZING book! It gave us the best restaurants (not common tourist traps) to visit while traveling the Island, great maps to situate ourselves, and wonderful points of interest. To us it was invaluable!!! 5 stars!!! A must when traveling to PR. We loaned it to another couple that traveled to Puerto Rico last year, and they loved it too. I guess we will need to polish it off and pack it in our suitcase, since we are headed back next month.

Being born and raised in Puerto Rico,I thought I knew all the good places to visit. I bought this book with a little skepticism and what a wonderful surprise it was. The author definitely goes off the beaten path and the tourist traps. My husband and I just came back from there and the directions and the restaurants that the author mentioned were excellent.

If you definitely want to explore the richness of the island and the diversified environments that it offers, this book is for you. I highly recommend it. We took it with us on our recent visit and we really had a very enjoyable time.

Noticing this book was a recent guide to Puerto Rico written by a woman, my wife insisted on buying it. We both enjoyed reading it for its combination of listings and colorful background notes. It makes you realize there is an island and culture worth exploring. We liked the descriptions that helped us better understand the way of life and why things are what they are. We decided to stay at smaller hotels where we heard Spanish and could eat local food. It let us appreciate what a fascinating and friendly place the island is. This book really did encourage us to get "off the beaten path."

The most helpful thing about this book was the lists of places to stay at the end of every region-discussion. Other than that, "Explore Puerto Rico, 5th Edition" had almost all the same sites & activities listed. For the sake of traveling lightly, we ended up not even bringing "Off the Beaten Path" with us, relying instead on "Explore Puerto Rico" (which has its own issues, see my review on that page for details).

In general, I like to avoid touristy spots, and bought this book in the hope that it would recommend places to visit. The format of this book is like a long essay, which makes it difficult to read, and not very useful as a guidebook. It goes something like: "if you take this street, first you'll pass this restaurant, which some people like for the chicken, and then this museum, etc" without giving definitive recommendations and must-sees for the tourist with limited time. I'm glad that my boyfriend brought a Fodor's, which was pretty comprehensive. But the best part of our trip was at an ecolodge that was very much off the beaten path (45 min on a narrow dirt road, up into the El Yunque rainforest), which I found by doing good old web research (search "elena el yunque").

Perhaps in the San Juan area, where I have not stayed, this book provides "off the beaten path" places to visit and sights to see, however, for Ponce and south Puerto Rico I was sourly disappointed. All the spots mentioned were pretty much the standard found in any other guidebook.

Furthermore, there is much to be said for the writing style. As others have mentioned, the book is a long essay that needs to be read at least in chapters. So you cannot just use it as a quick reference, which is really difficult while on the road.

Lastly, it is near impossible to find anything using this book alone (and not that I as a woman am bashing a woman writer), BUT the book comes without MAPS or any other helpful directions about how to get even to the most popular touristy places. Basically, the directions that go something like: "On the way from Boqueron beach, make a quick right by the giant cactus and the rock and the what-is-it will be right there" JUST DO NOT WORK.

Plus, it misses some really phenomenal things such as cock fights (Salinas) or how unbelievably BAD Puerto Rican food is and where to go to find pretty decent international food.

For better guides and less headache, pick another.