Product Description

Includes everything about budget travel through Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama; accurate air bus and ferry routes and schedules; the best spots for scuba diving, wildlife watching, jungle trekking and language study; and a Spanish language guide.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #300269 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 808 pages

Customer Reviews

Backbacker
After using the Lonely Planet's 'South East Asia on a Shoestring' I was sceptical of buying another of LP's guides. However for some reason I found myself with 'Central America on a Shoestring' and it actually turned out to be a very handy travel companion. The information was up to date (probably as we somehow managed to be one of the first people to get our hands on it) and the writers remained nicely neutral to cater for various ages and travel desires. Definitely recommended.

Well, it does what it says on the tin.....but
With a new Rough Guide out now does that make the two and a half year old Lonely Planet obsolete? Certainly the RG looks better, in fact Footprints and Bradt and just about every guide book look better than LP due to the latter's `brutalist' typeface and design. This is not just an aesthetic complaint but is important on those occasions when the heat and fatigue get to you, maybe you just do not take as much information in as there is present because the blocks of small print start to tire the eyes. However, that smaller type does mean that the LP runs to almost 100 pages more than RG but still seems to take up less space, just about pocket-sized.

Another vital point in LP's favour is the comprehensive bus information, patchy in RG. If you are going from Guatemala City to Panama City by chicken bus (it's sort of fun, sort of arduous) then you need the LP. If you wouldn't go near one the RG is the logical choice. That doesn't mean to say that LP is without fault, I spent over two hours waiting for a bus in Perquin, El Salvador (and with a dodgy stomach problem that I would rather have nursed in a café with a bathroom nearby) only to realise that LP had the same departure time for this town two or more hours up the road as for San Miguel where the bus started from. Unfortunately this is not the only simple error that could have been easily rectified by effective proof-reading, maybe the new tie-in with the BBC will sharpen them up, I would hate to think that my licence fees were being used to support badly edited publications (there again I am not too sure about the unfair advantage LP gets over the competition).

Another worry is the frequency with which LP reviewers get to places away from the capital cities, I felt in Coban, Guatemala that the information seemed a decade out of date. Sometimes the apparent reliance on customer reviews looked over trusting. Of course, you can always use the LP to get away from the backpacker trail by going only to places not reviewed there. Now that we can all log on to Trip Advisor or HostelWorld to find a place to stay shouldn't we expect better written, better presented and more fact laden printed guide books (maybe LP could start with comprehensive elevation information for major towns and cities - it is mostly there but all over the place, sometimes at the head of a section, sometimes in the text, sometimes just an intimation. Knowing how high somewhere is helps you to pack the right clothes, or find a way of escaping the heat). Panama is not well served by this guide either, it is as if everyone got a bit tired by the end. So, in summary, more effort needed next edition.

Rough on accuracy
I used this book extensively throughout South America and it was often incorrect or completely wrong. This edition is certainly too out of date for using in 2003. If a new edition comes out, it might be worth a look, otherwise buy something more recent. Other problem was that the author sometimes recommended non-budget options, maybe he didn't understand the meaning of a shoestring guide.