Traveler's Companion Peru

Rating:
Summary: do not buy this book
Review: I have just returned from Peru and found the lonely planet guide to be the outstanding guide book for this country. This book should be left on the shelf, it does not offer anything that the Lonely Planet does not cover in greater depth.

Rating:
Summary: Great series/Fabulous cultural photos/Cultural studies
Review: I've had this book out of the library twice anyway, bought it now. The Traveler's Companion series is an excellent series of travel-culture-photo books. Great photography. Other series like Moon Publications and Lonely Planet are guidebooks, also with great photos, but Lonely Planet can get stuck in a rut, and their staff half-baked. Lonely Planet's brand-new Trekking in Patagonia edition I bought in 12/99 didn't get raves from the Dutch girls on our trek; they thought the refugios (park huts) weren't covered enough. Yeah, Planet's was a good book anyway, and Lonely Planet, HQ'd in Oz, has a big following. They're not the only guy in town; there's Let's Go, and Moon Publications. Traveler's Companion has beautiful books, not set up though as route-guides but as cultural & photographic outlays. I like them a lot. Some books I read, and some I marvel at the photos & scan the text. Cultural/outdoor photography collections aren't meant to be path-by-path trail guides, despite having extensive text descriptions of the countries. Very interesting book!