The Rough Guide to West Africa is the most comprehensive and user-friendly guide to one of the world’s hardest – and most rewarding – regions for travel, covering the 15 visitable countries from Mauritania to Cameroon in fifty percent more detail than its only competitor. Each chapter of the Rough Guide includes thoroughly researched hotel and restaurant listings, sections on everything from food and language to media and sport, and thoughtful background on the environment, culture, history, politics and music. The colour introduction highlights the region’s attractions and touches on its great range of cultural and scenic impressions. Colour photo sections on Arts and Crafts and Fruit and Food Plants offer fascinating information and useful advice. More than 160 accessible and accurate maps guide you from the urban jungle to beaches and mountains. And an extensive index references every place mentioned in the guide.
Visit the author blog at http://theroughguidetowestafrica.blogspot.com for news, links and updates.
Make the most of your time with The Rough Guide to West Africa
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Richard Trillo has been visiting Africa since 1978. He is the co-author of Rough Guides to West Africa and The Gambia and is Director of Communications for Rough Guides in London.
Admittedly, Lonely Planet's version is a couple years old now, but this Rough Guide is SO much better in terms of what to expect, how to get around, cultural aspects, what to bring, and a general cohesive overview of the region, it's sort of ridiculous. Lonely Planet's book is essentially useless compared to this. We're moving to West Africa for an extended stay, and this book has been helpful, informative, and even an interesting read. I'm glad that I waited for and then purchased this new release rather than just sticking with the guidebooks I had.
Just returned from Ghana, Togo and Benin and while I think some of the prices and phone #'s are getting a bit outdated over all it was a great help and pretty spot on. The accomodation and getting there and around info was really helpfull. Alot of usefull information. I would recomend the book!
I used this book while working for 4 months in West Africa. I tried to use it to travel around Ghana and found it pretty much useless. Over half the book is cultural information and longwinded historical essays about the country. That's nice, but what I really wanted to know was how to get places, where to stay, is it safe, and how much does it cost. It's terrible at listing public transportation. It will tell that there is a bus from Accra to Cape Coast but doesn't say where to get it, how much it costs, a time estimate, or even give the name of more than one bus company (and the one they listed is far from the best one in Ghana). The only thing it does semi-well is listing options for lodging and restaurants. The guide also doesn't even cover Liberia or Ivory Coast. It's still better than Lonely Planet but that's only because Lonely Planet is so terrible.
I bought this book to start mentally planning a future trip to West Africa (take a month, go wander around) and realizing that Lonely Planet's book was a few years old, I went with my backup, the Rough Guide.
The book is pretty comprehensive - the information seems up to date and there's enough tidbits to make me think that someone actually visited these places and reported firsthand versus relied on anecdotal evidence. Mainly I was interested in Senegal, since I want to go there for the infamous Paris-Dakar rally along with Cameroon.
But after reading the other reviews, I was like "Oh yeah, where IS Liberia?" and went back to the book to find it not there. What's up with that, Rough Guide?
i was dissapointed with this guide book ... not so much because of the information it contained but because the maps were ilegible and therefor useless ... also because the information was not available easier by a detailed index ... i had to flic thru the pages to find the section i needed so in my opinion poorly laid out ... it felt to me more like someones impression of the place rather than factual information which i would have prefered ...
