The Rough Guide to West Africa, 3rd [Paperback]

Richard Trillo (Author), Jim Hudgens (Author)

Book Description

Series: Rough Guide to West Africa | Publication Date: January 1, 2000

This guide has listings for restaurants and hotels for all budgets, and pre-departure information such as visa and health requirements. There is background on music, history, culture, politics and wildlife and on such topics as crossing the Sahara and volcano-climbing in the Cape Verde Islands.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A MARVELLOUS GUIDE, PACKED WITH HARD-NOSED ADVICE AND INFORMATION, STREETS AHEAD OF ANY OTHER TRAVEL GUIDE. -- West Africa Magazine

PERHAPS THE MOST IMPRESSIVE OF THE NEW ROUGH GUIDE RELEASES IS THE MASSIVE ROUGH GUIDE TO WEST AFRICA -- Chicago Tribune

THE BEST GUIDEBOOK ON THE AREA -- Daily Telegraph

THE ROUGH GUIDE TO WEST AFRICA IS A FIXTURE ON MOST PEOPLE'S TABLES -- BBC Radio 4

The Rough Guide to West Africa provides the most up-to-date information -- Sunday Times

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Rough Guides; 3rd edition (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1858284686
• ISBN-13: 978-1858284682
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,730,821 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I first went to Africa in 1977, with a vague idea that I could hitchhike all the way to Timbuktu from my family home in the New Forest in the south of England. I left with a friend, with $100 each in $10 notes and a copy of the Michelin map. No guidebooks, no mobile phones, not much sense. We got to the fabled city, and home again, largely by good luck and the kindness of others, having learned what a visa is (a hard lesson when you're already half way across the Sahara and the Malian embassy is in Algiers) and what malaria feels like. Back in the UK I went to university, got a degree in sociology, and later went to London University's School of Oriental & African Studies to do a Master's Degree in East African Ethnography and Linguistics.

I'm the author of The Rough Guide to Kenya and The Rough Guide to West Africa and co-author with Emma Gregg of The Rough Guide to The Gambia and The Rough Guide to First-Time Africa. I was formerly director of communications at Rough Guides and I now work as a freelance author, editor, writer and PR consultant.

You can read my First-Time Africa blog at http://firsttimeafrica.wordpress.com, my Kenya blog at http://theroughguidetokenya.blogspot.com and my West Africa blog at http://theroughguidetowestafrica.blogspot.com. Follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/RichardTrillo (@RichardTrillo), email me at richardtrillo [at] blueyonder.co.uk and read more about me at the RoughGuides.com website or at my own website, richardtrillo.com.

Current titles:

The Rough Guide to West Africa 5th edition (2008)
The Rough Guide to Kenya 9th edition (2010)
The Rough Guide to First-Time Africa 2nd edtion (2011)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Necessary but not sufficient, July 25, 2000

By 

Ellen Winters - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rough Guide to West Africa, 3rd (Paperback)

This Rough Guide offers thorough, helpful information for travelling around West Africa, including events, hotels, restaraunts, cutoms, traditions, safety precautions, language reference, etc. I especially liked the fact that each time CFA's or other currency were mentioned, their dollar equivalents were also calculated. The Lonely Planet Guide does not do this. Also, this Rough Guide is organized better and easier to read than the Lonely Planet. The problem with the Rough Guide, though, is that while it gives all the necessary information to get around, it does not offer any subjective advice that the naive West Africa traveller would want to know. For example, The Lonely Planet guide gives the same information as this book about a campsite in Niamey, but adds that it is ugly, with few trees, and many people have been robbed there. That is something I want to know. I certainly found all the necessary information in this guide, but it is still insufficient in many ways.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not the best investment, March 28, 2002

By 

Andrius Uzkalnis (Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: West Africa: The Rough Guide, Second Edition (1995) (Paperback)

At the moment, there are two main contenders on the market with comparable books on West Africa: Rough Guide and Lonely Planet. Neither is perfect.

Rough Guide may feel a bit more professionally-made, and has been made on a bigger budget too, but it suffers from terminally boring writing style.

I said this before and I`ll say it again: if people who write guidance for your tax returns were to write guidebooks they would probably come up with similarly uninspired language.

The book does not offer the same level of self-righteous (and often annoying) rhetoric about evils of capitalism as Lonely Planet. I find this aspect commendable: some of us want the travel guide to give us facts and not explanations for whom to vote and what to think.

However, on balance, I have to admit that Lonely Planet is better resarched and more accurate, and also less bulky. If you have plenty of luggage allowance and money's no object, buy both, otherwise, stick with Lonely Planet.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book for planning multicountry itineraries, January 4, 2006

By 

James S. Dodds - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Rough Guide to West Africa 4 (Rough Guide Travel Guides) O/P (Paperback)

As most of the reviews point out, the battle here is between Lonely Planet and Rough Guide. I bought them both, as I usually do before a big trip, and after studying them both will take the RG. They are both good in terms of information on hotels and restaurants, I just found the layout of RG a bit better. Cultural and travel basics are better organized up front, the maps are larger and much clearer, and the references to the maps in the text easier to decipher. But for me the big plus is that the RG contains much better information about moving between countries, and information about specific transport options from area to area - boat, bus, train - is much more detailed. If you are planning a multi-country itinerary the RG is, IMHO, much better. They are both equal in terms of info, I think, I just feel like for me RG got the details right.