Customer Reviews

The Rough Guide to The Dominican Republic

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

 

 

I used this guide to travel in Santo Domingo, Costanza and Samana and found it to be very useful in trip planning. First of all, it helped me to identify Samana and Constanza as great places to visit without the heavy tourism. It was also packed with information on practically every town we passed on the way and offered good hotel and restaurant recommendations. My only criticism is that it seemed the author probably traveled by car and the information on public transportation wasn't quite as thorough as in Lonely Planet guides. However, the sheer volume of other information and the easy to use layout made up for that. Overall, a very solid guide for both pre-trip planning and travel within the DR.

If you're going to the DR and are going anywhere other than the resorts, you won't regret your time spent reading this book. If you are going to the resorts, you won't be experiencing the DR anyway so don't worry about it.
Here's what you get:
1- lots of detail
2- no ads or cheap plugs
3- first hand account
Enjoy !!

I recently traveled to the Dominican Republic and purchased this guide for my trip based on the online reviews.

Although the book is informative and does offer a good selection of transportation and hotel suggestions, it is unnecessarily and generously sprinkled with negative personal opinions from the author.

On my trip, I had the pleasure of traveling throughout the island, from West to East. I was overwhelmed with the vastness and variety the country had to offer. However while reading the guide, it was difficult to find a single chapter where the author did not go out of the way to offer some additional caustic comment on the area being described.

I was extremely distracted by the constant negativity that it overshadowed the content. After struggling to discern relevant facts from the author's personal opinions, I decided to put the guide down altogether and let the trip become a unique unbiased experience. I would not recommend this particular guide. Perhaps an updated guide or one from a different publisher altogether might be more appropriate.

Edit: I came back to re-read this review after revisiting the book and taking a few additional trips to DR. I now feel just as strongly about the views in this perhaps dated guide as when I did when I first wrote it.