Customer Reviews

The Rough Guide to Mexico (Rough Guides)

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

 

 

Rough guides are ideal for a certain kind of holiday. If you are planning to go to an all inclusive resort in Cancun and only venture out for arranged excursions then this book will never leave the shelf. Rough guides are for those who want to explore the real thing. That is why I won't visit any country without a copy.

This does not disappoint. The factual information is accurate and helpful. The restaurant recommendations were welcome - especially the wonderfully named 'Gory Tacos' in Downtown Cancun!

The information on archeological sites such as Coba and Chitchen Itza was extremely helpful, the travel tips essential.

The only slight reservation is that a bit of snobbery sometimes slips in. For example the resort of Akumel is dismissed as expensive and shallow. In fact it is beautiful and well worth the visit being quiet but accessible.

For all that this is still the best guide book for the thinking traveller!

I 've just finished a month of travelling through mexico (Oct 1999). This guide gives a lot of interesting and essential information about live in Mexico, food, Mexicans' attitude, transport, health... It's a real pleasure to read it as it is written in a very understanding and fascinatingly way. I was really surprised of the accurate price information of hotels and restaurants in the Guide. Moreover, the useful tips about what transport facility to take, saved me a lot of money, which is of course important when travelling on a budget. Also citymaps and the plans of the ruins are very detailed and an indispensable tool when entering new places. Furthermore, I visited some less known, but wonderful places, mentioned in the Guide, where almost no other tourists came. Summarized, I'd suggest this book to everybody who plans to make a trip to Mexico!

I've used rough guides before for cities, and they were very good, so I didn't even think to get a different book for Mexico. However, Mexico was just too much for this book. It got me where I needed to go for the most part, but the maps are really small and had mistakes more than several times. Often hotel and restaurant prices are also not labeled correctly. My worst experience with this book was when I got to Mexico City and discovered that there are no street names on the city map. Yeah, that was an interesting trip to find the tourist booth for another map. Basically, this book is okay, but you will have to do a lot more work than you'll want to when you get to Mexico.

If you are looking to take a 5 star tour of mexico.This book is for you.It concentrates on all the major tourist traps and calls everything else."not worth stopping for"

This book was a disappointment. It's information was incomplete and uninformative (and I'm talking about the recent FIFTH Edition -- published in 2002). Even in the touristy beachy destinations, I did not find the information helpful. Many of the budget hotels listed were closed, and there were no similar alternatives provided. Very little historical background for the sites I saw. Not much value added. I spent time on the Pacific Coast (not Baja) and in the Central Highlands. For Nahrit, Jalisco, the Bajio, and Michoacan states, it's practically worthless. Some of the worst maps in the business (Lonely Planet has excellent maps, so even if its information is lacking, at least you have reliable orientation). I would be VERY CAREFUL about buying another Rough Guide.