Despite the wealth of travel information about any country you can find on the web, most travelers feel more comfortable with a printed guidebook in hand when they first arrive. It goes anywhere and requires no electricity or internet connection. More importantly, it is a professionally fact-checked resource that, depending on the number of editions it has under its belt, has stood the test of time.I personally haven’t used a guidebook in years. Not because I’m such a savvy traveler, but because part of being an expat with young kids means, in my case at least, that vacations are for visiting one’s homeland to unite grandparents and grandchildren.
Therefore, for this article I’ve enlisted the help of a couple I know who are pretty much constantly on the move. I’ll call them Bill and Melinda, in homage to another well-traveled couple we all know. Bill and Melinda have visited 33 countries in the last 10 years, including several trips to Chile, and each is a 5-time expat.
Bill divides guidebooks into four categories:
- Pretty pictures May be helpful to decide where to go, but Heaven help you if you try to use them on the ground– DK falls in this class;
- Solid info Tells you what you should see, but you may miss a lot – I count Michelin and Frommer’s here. The star system is great for pointing out important sites but it may omit things that you’ll kick yourself for not having seen.
- Broader coverage without so much focus on what you should like. Lonely Planet or Moon for example. These require a lot more work. You have to read them to know which sites you want to visit. You have to read the hotel and restaurant reviews to figure out which you might like. But the extra work is rewarded with a more satisfying experience.
- Travel guides that don’t tell you where to stay or how to get there but do give you a feel for different places and what they might be like. I don’t know of a series like this but individual volumes can be wonderful.
Melinda considers the most important feature of a travel guide to be its coverage of cultural attractions: “Cultural attractions are the most important feature of a guidebook. I hate to get back from a trip to find that I didn’t know about a great museum or sight. Some guidebooks seem to devote big sections to younger travelers, such as bars and nightclubs. This to me is valuable space that should be devoted to a more thorough treatment of the sights and more serious cultural offerings. Do folks really need that much help choosing a bar?”
Of course, you can choose your Chile travel guide based solely on its ratings on Amazon.com, but take an extra few minutes to consider other important factors:
Brand. Bill says “Unless there is some compelling reason to switch, I will stick with one brand. Not because they are always the best but because I’ve learned their system and how to interpret what they say. If this doesn’t make sense to you, take a couple of guides out of the library and imagine yourself in a particular location in a city and try to find a nearby restaurant that you’d like to have dinner at. You will soon find that an unfamiliar system of organizing the reviews, or displaying them on the map, will make the job much harder. Once you are familiar with the system, it takes a lot of the stress out of the process.”
Detail/depth. Bill says “I’d always go for the most detailed guide. If the weight it too much cut it up. They are expendable. We often carry just the pages for the city we are in.”
Historical background. Melinda says “The history (cultural, social and political) that the guide author writes as an introduction is very important. Skim this country background section and you can get a good idea of how experienced, thorough and dedicated the author is. I also like an author who recommends lots of additional reading about the country, both fiction and non-fiction.”
Number of editions. Bill says “Look out for first editions. They often have serious typographical mistakes: Like telling you to turn left, instead of right. I wouldn’t worry too much about the publication date. Unless it’s really old it will probably be ok. You may find details like closing times are off, but it pays to double check those anyway.”
A few other tidbits:
Wayne Bernhardson, author of the Moon Handbooks for Argentina, Buenos Aires, Chile, and Patagonia, as well as the Moon Spotlights on Tierra del Fuego & Chilean Patagonia and The Chilean Lake District, has an excellent blog, Southern Cone Travel, with which he supplements his travel guides. Chilephiles (like me), don’t skip the Argentina articles; many are relevant to life on this side of the Andes as well.
Bill says “I’d also recommend buying a good city map before you go. I’ve found the ones from International Travel Maps to be reliable. They are infinitely superior to the maps in the guide books and to the giveaway tourist maps.”
In regards to niche tourism, such as ecotourism, Melinda says “Ecoturism is important, for the tourist as well as the country visited. Having said that, an ecotour in one county might not be that different in an ecotour in another, whereas there are always different cultural attractions that should be seen. And often ecotours are run by gringos and you miss out on seeing more of the locals if you only do an ecotour. Some places you must visit with a group, of course, such as Antarctica. Otherwise lots of ‘ecotouring’ can be done on your own.”
For Chile, Melinda recommends the following literary companion, in addition to a traditional travel guide:
Popular Chile travel guides, newest first