Let's Go 2000: Central America : The World's Bestselling Budget Travel Series

by Inc. Let's Go

Release Date: 01 January, 2000

Edition: Paperback

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I rate the book as fair

I travelled Belize and Guatemala for 3 weeks using this book as the only source of guide. This book does not contain any pictures (unlike in Lonely Planet) of attractions so you have no idea what kind of place you are visiting until you actually go there. Unlike visiting Europe where many people have some idea of what they want to see in a country they plan to visit (e.g., Effle Tower in Paris) I believe most people visiting Guatemala have no idea where they want to visit and so having some pictures of major attractions would be very helpful in determining whether to make a trip to certain attraction or not. Everything is black and white in this book and the only color pages are ads!!!
Also, the format of the book has not been changed at all at least since 1994 (if not longer). One might argue that why mess with a successful product but I think the publisher could use a design update and still improve the layout of the book. The book uses soy ink and recycled paper. While that may be environmentally prudent thing to do, I sure didn't like ink left on my fingers and low quality of the book due to employment of such ink and paper.
One strong point of the book I found was its accuracy of listed various costs (hotels, fees and etc.)

Overall, this book was satisfactory and provided the information I needed. If you are only interested in contents of the book, this will do fine but if you think how material is presented is also important then look at other books.

muddled

This guide is very poorly thought out, with near-hopeless maps and a rather irritating tone (gee just gotta out of high school...). The recommendations were generally reasonably sound, though I found the transport details to be out of date (I used 2001 edition). There are better guides on the market (hello Rough Guides and Footprint)...