Moon Handbooks: Ecuador 2 Ed: Including the Galapagos Islands

Rating:
Summary: Best of the 3 Ecuador books I bought
Review: Hi,

I bought three Ecuador guides for my recent trip. Lonely Planet was pretty good but for detail on hotels and restaurants the Moon Guide gave the greatest detail

Rating:
Summary: excellent guidebook
Review: i've travelled a lot, and i've usually just picked out the lonely planet book on wherever i'm going almost by habit. but i was getting sick of how dull they are, so i decided to try a different one for this trip. this seemed like the most interesting among the competition.

i like dhow the author took the time to explain so much about the history and ecology of the country. in two and a half months i only found a few places where the travel details weren't accurate, which is pretty good for these books. but it was all the rest that made the difference. it was great to actually learn something from a guidebook for once. the stuff about the galapagos especially gave a much better sense of the islands (DONT miss them if you go) then just listing the plants and animals.

i used this book for ecuador and another one for peru right afterwards, and there was no comparison. so i knew where all the hotels were in peru and how much everything cost (at least when that author was there). but in ecuador i read about local legends and famous people, which may not seem that important when you're looking for a hotel at midnight, but trust me it can make a big difference in your experience.

plus i liked how much there way about outdoor activities like surfing, rafting, hikingand mountain climbing, since i did all of them while i was there.

great book!

Rating:
Summary: The best Ecuador guide going
Review: Informative, entertaining, obsessively comprehensive--you have to love a guidebook that quotes Kurt Vonnegut and describes Galapagos penguins as looking "as out of place as eskimos at a beach party." Makes you realize how dull most other travel guides are. And all the travel details are dead-on, too. My wife and hiked around Cotopaxi volcano, rafted in the Amazon, and went birdwatching along the coast, and in all cases the information was accurate and complete.