Eritrea, 3rd: The Bradt Travel Guide (Paperback)

~ Edward Denison (Author), Edward Paice (Author)
Key Phrases: government headquarters, cathedral compound, mosque square, Red Sea, Harnet Avenue, Embassy of the State of Eritrea (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“I was greatly helped by [this] guide.”

- George Mandel, Israel (consumer)

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Description

A new edition of the essential guide for independent travelers to this unusual and remarkable African country, which has emerged from its war-torn past to welcome tourists with its reclaimed independence. This update provides the freshest source of information published on a compact and traveler-friendly country that has seen many changes. The Eritreans’ overwhelming hospitality makes their country readily explorable with the aid of the maps, notes, and language section in this guide; and the interior, rich in historical remains, is well worth visiting. Its colonial past has stamped the capital, Asmara, with the charm of a southern Italian town, featuring numerous bars, cafés, pastry shops, broad avenues, and markets, plus a Roman Catholic cathedral. Eritrea’s main port, Massawa, is a natural gateway to diving off some of the 350 islands in the Red Sea. The Dahalak Islands are easily accessible from the mainland for travelers and Eritrea provides the background to the natural history of this treasure trove of fish, corals, and shells, and haven for birds, dolphins, turtles, and the rare dugong.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Bradt Travel Guides; 3rd edition (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841620572
• ISBN-13: 978-1841620572
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,917,610 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Inaccurate & Uninspiring, October 22, 2004

By	Laszlo Wagner (Hungary) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is one of the poorest guidebooks I have ever used!

In strong contrast to Bradt's excellent guide to neighbouring Ethiopia, this guide to Eritrea is so poor it is nearly useless.
Even before departure, I found that the book just failed to make Eritrea sound exciting - it made it sound dull.

The very weakest points are its maps!
Can you believe that a full page regional map of say, Western Eritrea, can have a grand total of four (yes, FOUR!) places in that region marked on it, fewer than are marked on the much smaller map for the entire country, and failing to show even the places that are described in the relevant section of the guide???
The city map for Asmara is a joke (I've uploaded a scanned image of it to see for yourself), with no names marked for most streets, and most of those that are marked being old names that were changed years ago.

Things to see & do? Very few described, very poorly.

History & politics? These chapters look as if they had been contributed by the propaganda department of the Eritrean government, with glorifying accounts of the heroic fight for freedom and no mentioning of the disgraceful present.

Flora & fauna? The author's knowledge seems to end at distinguishing a mammal from a bird - maybe.

The bottom line is that until Bradt gets a new author to rewrite this guide completely, you are far better off reading the shorter but much better chapter on this wonderful country in Lonely Planet's Ethiopia & Eritrea guide than wasting your money, like I did, on ordering this book.

The 2 stars were only given as an acknowledgement for the publisher's effort to put out a separate guide to this unusual destination, not for the actual value of this book which is closer to zero.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good travel guide, November 25, 2005

By	m_noland "m_noland" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

To my knowledge this is the only guidebook in English devoted solely to Eritrea. The closest comparator is the Lonely Planet guide which covers both Ethiopia and Eritrea. As one might expect in a volume devoted purely to Eritrea, this volume has more information and detail (more maps of specific towns, for example) and the historical discussion of the origins of the independence movement is informative. As another reviewer mentioned, successive political regimes have changed the names of streets in downtown Asmara; in my experience, local people are familiar with both the "traditional" and the "official" names, and the use of the maps in this guide was not problematic. The one aspect in which the Lonely Planet guide tops this book is in that book's walking tours which I found quite useful.