Customer Reviews

The Rough Guide to The Yucatan (Rough Guide Map: Yucatan)

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The description says that the map "boasts an A-Z street finder index with telephone numbers and prices for a number of restaurants. The Yucatan's shopping streets, pedestrian zones and major buildings are all edged in different colours [sic] to make them easier to find. The useful 'Time Map' charts the opening days and times of all the Yucatan's sights and the map's detailed transport information will help you to make the most of getting around the Yucatan."

The map has a street index, but that is it. There are no phone numbers, no prices, no restaurants, no shopping streets, no pedestrian zones and no major buildings indicated. There is no useful 'Time Map' charts, no opening days and no times of any of the Yucatan's sights. And, there is no detailed transport information.

The back of the map is blank/white. I don't know if I got a defective copy, or if their description is totally wrong. I sent two emails to Rough Guide from the "contact us" link at their website, but only received one autoreply that said that they get a lot of email, and thus will not likely get back to me.

Therefore, unless a post from Rough appears here in the future that indicates my map was a misprint, you should know this:

1. It is a 1:650,000 scale map of the peninsula. This is better than some maps that are 1:1,000,000, but another one at Amazon (that I did not buy because of this product's description) is 1:500,000 -- better detail than this map.
2. The map does have an index of towns and major sites.
3. Gas station locations are shown on the map.
4. That's it. No city blow-ups (there is no detail for Cancun, Merida, or Campeche). There is NO other information on the map.

Would I rate this product higher if the description were corrected? NO. This is a 3'x4' piece of paper for people to haul internationally; a guide book publisher should be the first to utilize the 12 square feet of blank space on the back of the map! City blow-ups would be useful, opening days of major sites would be a good idea, a mileage chart would be welcome, and a list of Spanish driving vocabulary and phrases could prove handy. The list of possibilities goes on.

Thus, the map is inaccurately described, and the final product not well thought out.

*UPDATE 4/23/10*

Having returned from driving in the Yucatan, I remain very critical of this map.

First, a city map of Campeche would have been very useful; a city map of Merida was critical. The Rough Guide Guidebook is of no use, as its "Getting There and Away" sections has NO information about driving; only bus information. Thankfully, the Moon Yucatan book has some driving direction (e.g., "take Calle 65 out of Merida to the east") which was SO MUCH MORE USEFUL than this map. Secondly, it is missing entire highways. The only major road it shows is the Cuota between Merica & Campeche, although the Libre was the only road we were able to stumble upon.

Is it good for anything? You can chart your progress over long distances, as you can see the majority of cities/towns to which roadsigns point, and it is possible to add up the Km distance markings, once you understand the difference between the font sizes of the multiple distance marks. The map is printed on plastic, so it did not tear. However the ink rubbed off of the areas where it is folded.

We bought this map for a 16 day trip through the Mexican states of Quintana Roo and Yucatan in March and April 2010. It is fine if you just want to get a general sense of where things are, but it is totally useless if you are renting a car and actually need to know how to get from one place to another. Only the major highways are labelled. None of the secondary highways and smaller roads shown on the map are labelled. (What's the point of showing them on the map if you're not going to label them? And it's not a space concern - some of them are very long and there would be plenty of room to include their names.) There are no city maps, which is a real shame, since the whole back side of the map is blank - how hard would it have been to include city maps of Cancun, Merida, Valladolid, etc.? I will say that the map is printed on high quality water resistant paper. It just doesn't have enough info. to be useful. If you are planning to rent a car and drive around like we did, I highly recommend buying a Mexican road atlas instead.

To be honest, I have not spent much time reading this book yet. I've been mostly using the Lonely Planet guide to Mexico. This is probably because I am more familiar with the Lonely Planet books in general. The Rough Guide looks interesting, and I can't wait to dig in!