VIVA Travel Guides Peru: Exploring Machu Picchu, Cusco, the Inca Trail, Arequipa, Lake Titicaca, Lima and beyond [Paperback]

Crit Minster (Author), Paula Newton (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2010

This April 2010 edition is the most up-to-date guide to Peru available anywhere. Peru's soaring mountains, untamed jungles and wild beaches have been welcoming travelers for millennia. Visitors today will find a dynamic, exciting country that is still immersed in its past as the center of Inca civilization and Spain's New World empire. Let VIVA guide you through Peru's fascinating mix of cultures and landscapes. With this guidebook, you can -Explore the legacy of Peru's ancient cultures, from the mysterious Nazca Lines and priceless relics of Sipan to the incomparable Machu Picchu. -Hike centuries-old Inca footpaths through timeless Andean villages -Commune with nature in some of the world's driest deserts, highest peaks and most remote rain forest. Why settle for an outdated guidebook? The VIVA community of on-the-ground travel writers, local experts and travelers like you are continuously updating and improving this guide at vivatravelguides.com. Join them, and together we'll make the best guidebook to Peru even better.

Product Details

• Paperback: 540 pages
• Publisher: Viva Publishing; 2 edition (April 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0979126436
• ISBN-13: 978-0979126437
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #741,011 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #84 in Books > Travel > Latin America > South America > Peru
  • #99 in Books > History > Ancient > Incan

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Has potential, needs work, April 12, 2008

By 

John Walzer - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: VIVA Travel Guides Peru: Exploring Machu Picchu, Cusco, the Inca Trail, Arequipa, Lake Titicaca, Lima and beyond (Paperback)

Viva Travel Guides is the newest entrant in the crowded field of travel guidebooks. As can be said of many youngsters, it has potential but needs discipline and polish. Much of the writing is pedestrian, repetitive, and sloppy; the book is full of typos and bad grammar; and it contains some whoppers of misinformation and tortured geography.

I lived in Cusco for a year a few years ago and know Southern Peru well. I bought this book to see how it measures up to the more established guides. While it is certainly serviceable, and will get you around the country without major mishap, it desperately needs a sharp-eyed editor to tighten and focus the writing, and correct the inaccuracies. The book is published using print-on-demand technology; the text and cover look fine, but the maps are low-resolution and at times indecipherable.

One fault is its repetitiveness. Each section opens with an introduction, then a "Highlights" section, then more specific city listings. This results in needless repetition. For example, in the Arequipa section, the fact that Arequipa is a UNESCO World Heritage Site is mentioned three times in five pages.

Another fault is sloppy writing. The sheer number of nonexistent words shows they didn't run it through a spell checker before going to press. And if you don't know the difference between "its" and "it's," or "lie" and "lay," hire someone who does to edit your manuscript.

More damning---or amusing, depending on your point of view---is the inaccuracies. The book states that the road from Cusco to Puerto Maldonado goes "over the peak of Ausungate." Fortunately, the engineers left the 6,400m (21,000 ft.) peak to the glaciers and ran the road far below. In the Amazon section, the book says, "Most of the hotels and lodges in the Peruvian Amazon are in the cities of Iquitos, Manu and Tambopata." Sorry, but Manu and Tambopata aren't cities. Also in the Amazon, it describes a flight to Boca Manu leading to a stay in a Machiguenga lodge at Pongo de Mainique. In two sentences we are whisked from the Manu River to the Urubamba River, far to the west.

All guidebooks contain errors, but the Viva book is especially egregious. Given the higher-quality alternatives on the market, give this one a pass until they hire copy and content editors to whip it into shape.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than LP, January 31, 2008

By 

Evelyn (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: VIVA Travel Guides Peru: Exploring Machu Picchu, Cusco, the Inca Trail, Arequipa, Lake Titicaca, Lima and beyond (Paperback)

I usually take along the Lonely Planet when I travel, a friend recommended I use this Peru guide and I'm glad I did. All the information was really accurate and the guide helped me get around easily, picking great hotels and restaurants along the way. The tear-out contact list in the back was really useful when I needed to go to the doctor in Cusco.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful resource!, January 31, 2008

By 

Susan E. Baxley "sb9sj" (maryville, tn) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: VIVA Travel Guides Peru: Exploring Machu Picchu, Cusco, the Inca Trail, Arequipa, Lake Titicaca, Lima and beyond (Paperback)

Peru is one of the most interesting, culturally and historically-rich countries in South America, and the Viva guide did a great job of capturing all that this magical place has to offer, from detailed information about Machu Picchu to Lake Titicaca, Arequipa, Nazca, and even lesser known, but beautiful spots in the north.