If you’re on a road trip to someplace you’ve never
been, there’s two ways you can go. One is to just wing
it. The best plan is no plan at all, whatever happens, that’s
the plan. But sometimes, if you don’t have a lot of time
for things to (maybe) go wrong, it helps to have a plan. And
unless you know somebody wherever you’re going to, you’ll
have to rely on second hand information. Lacking local knowledge
there’s only two ways I know of to come up with a rough
plan. (The word rough is important, too much planning is a
bad thing) One is to research where you’re going on the
internet. If you’ve ever done this then you know that
the results can vary from really good info to totally piss
poor info. The second is to buy or borrow a guide book that
covers the area you’re going to. This is the point of
this column. Guide books are expensive and they are not all
the same. Read on and find the one that’s right for you.
-John Baccigaluppi
Rough Guides
This series is a good basic book that will steer you towards
the cheapest possible path along your travels. The key word
here is rough. The writing is down to earth and honest. You
can get a good idea from the intro paragraphs on a city or
region if it’s somewhere you’re interested in. Another
big plus to this series is that most of the text is also online
at www.roughguides.com. If you just want to check out an area,
or are only going to one city somewhere, you can often get
the basic info you need from their web site. This is the only
guide book series that has an extensive internet site. The
downside to this series is that it sometimes skips over accommodations
and food that might only be a dollar or two more than the
‘budget’ places that make up the focus of these
books. The coolest motel I’ve ever stayed in my life
was in La Paz in Southern Baja California. Every room was
different and hand painted and birds and monkeys roamed the
grounds. It was $1 more ($12 a night) than a really grungy
hostel that was in the Rough Guide, but wasn’t even listed.
Also, since the series tends to steer you towards the most
low budget places possible, it tends to overestimate the dangers
of a particular area; “Watch your valuables, and never
let anything out of your sight” is a common warning.
I’ve been to several ‘scary’ places in these
books, but they always seem just fine. Maybe I’m lucky,
but maybe it’s because I’m not in the total ghetto
areas they steer you towards. But, bottom line if you need
the cheapest possible route, this is the book for you.
Lonely Planet
This series is one of the best down to earth travel books
you can find. It still has some of the super budget recommendations
that the Rough Guide series has, but it also explores other
options which are often only a few dollars more. This is the
book that I found the cool motel in La Paz from. Overall,
the Lonely Planet guides are just a little more in depth than
the Rough Guides. For instance the Rough Guide to Spain is
873 pages, while the Lonely Planet guide is 978. The LP series
is also probably the most comprehensive of any other series,
covering almost every country and continent in the world.
This has become one of my favorite series of guide books.
Moon
This series of books is like the Lonely Planet series, but
in some ways better. They’re even more comprehensive
and down to earth than the LP series. The Mexico handbook
is a whopping 1187 pages long. I don’t have the Lonely
Planet guide, but the Rough Guide to Mexico is only 892 pages
long. (I do have the LP guide to Baja, though and it is extremely
thorough) The Moon books don’t cover the whole world
like the LP guides, but what they do cover they do in an exhaustive
manner. They also tend to specialize in the more un-traveled
areas of the world. For instance they have no guidebooks at
all that cover Europe (I guess they figured there were enough
already) but they have an extensive collection on Mexico,
Latin America, the Caribbean including Cuba, and Southeast
Asia. And, I’ve never come across better guide books
for the United States. About half the states of the US get
their own book, that makes each state seem as special as some
exotic locale across the ocean.
Let’s
Go
I’ve only recently stumbled across this series of books
when Heckler’s Design Intern, Brandy Faucette loaned
me the USA version before I had to leave on a trip for NYC.
I had some other guidebooks on NY, but this book had a listing
for a very cool (and cheap for NYC) hotel (the Chelsea Inn
212-645-8989) that I ended up in that was chill and refreshing;
a rarity in NYC. There were also extensive lodgings for Hostels
in NYC that were under $25 a night, that weren’t in any
other guide books. Apparently this entire series is re-written
each year by traveling students, so the attitude and budget
sensibility is right in line with traveling board riders.
These guides are also well designed and easy to navigate.
There are 28 books in the series covering the USA, Europe,
Mexico and some less traveled countries like India and South
Africa.
The Others:
The above represent my favorite guide books, but there are
some others out there worth mentioning. Frommer’s is
the pioneer of low budget travel and is still worth checking
out. I’ve often found some great deals in this series.
But, the design is weak and when you’re dealing with
this much info, the design is crucial in helping you to wade
through it all. These books are a little hard to navigate,
unlike all of the others listed above. The Fodor’s guides
are good, but only if you’ve got a lot of money. If you’re
on a budget, steer clear as these guides tend to favor the
more safer, generic options over the more interesting and
maybe less consistent, but never lacking in character options.
The Fodor’s series does benefit from the best design
of the bunch though and are extremely easy to navigate. As
tour guides of interesting sights, these just can’t be
beat. Insight Guides are almost useless for actually planning
a trip, but unlike all of the other guide books they have
tons of color photos and literate, interesting writing on
the culture and history of an area, that is invaluable in
helping you decide if you’re even interested in going
somewhere in the first place. But, when you do go, leave these
heavy books at home. Last and almost certainly least, if you
are a member of AAA or know someone who is, you can get free
guidebooks for most of the US and some foreign countries.
But, as much as I think AAA is one of the best organizations
in the USA, I can’t really recommend these books. They
have absolutely no editorial bias or slant which in this case
is not a good thing and just renders them about as useful
as the yellow pages.
