Travel to Caribbean

Insight Guide Puerto Rico (Insight Guides)

Format: Paperback
Author: Barbara Balletto
ReleaseDate: December, 2003
Publisher: Insight Guides
Rating:

Coffee Table Travel Guide
However, if you are looking for hard details essential to making travel plans before and during a trip, this book is totally useless. We bought the Insight Guide and were pleased by the wonderful photos and the descriptive sections that cover culture, food, activities, and regions. Even if other books fail to capture the flavor of Puerto Rico, they can be relied upon to locate hotels, restaurants, museums and hours etc. This is a decorative book, worth reading, but not a travel guide in the usual sense of the word. All these impressions are fresh, since we arrived home just last night. As Northern Californians who look to Hawaii and Mexico for tropical vacations, we found PR, especially the time we spent on Vieques, to be at least the equal of our usual locales, and the time on Vieques to be unmatched in terms of mile-long beaches that you have to yourself.

Colorful Helpful Maps and Photos with useful information
They cover most topics about the destination. The insight guide to Puerto Rico is typical of the insight guides in that it provides full color photos of attractions, people and area maps.

The book is almost as colorful as any National Geographic book. However, it does contains more in depth information on most aspects of Puerto Rico.

This guide is written with information that will remain valid for at least 5-8 years from the day it was written. However, you will not find website addresses nor recent prices for hotels, museums or attractions. If you are looking for bus schedules or travel times you'll also have to look elsewhere. That more mundane but useful travel information is not the focus of this book.

This book includes a great area map just inside the fold out front cover and a second one of Old San Juan on the fold out back cover. The logical place for all maps are on the covers just like this one. Good thinking people!

Read this book along with the Lonely Planet guide and you'll find just about everything you'll want to know. But, if you only get one book, this is the one to get.
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The guide I recommend for my travel course to P.R.
of Puerto Rico during the 1980s, and return occasionally for scientific work. I was a professor at the Univ. I also teach a Tropical Biology course every other year that includes spring break in Puerto Rico. I've read about eight guides to Puerto Rico and nearby islands, and I think this is the best in terms of accurately reviewing history, culture, and some of the biology and geology. The photographs are extraordinary, and really capture the island in all its facets. This Guide also gives the best information about each town's history and points of interest. It probably devotes the least space to casinos and cruise ship information, but I see that as a strength. I want my students to develop some understanding of the history and culture of Puerto Rico, even though it's a biology class, and I have found the first couple chapters of the Insight Guide do a better job than any of the drier academic sources out there. If you want to buy a guide to Puerto Rico for your own enrichment, this is the one to get.

Related products:
click image or link for details on these Caribbean travel books.

	Rand McNally Puerto Rico Easyfinder (Rand McNally Easyfinder)
	Puerto Rico Off the Beaten Path, 5th (Off the Beaten Path Series)
	Fodor's Puerto Rico, 3rd Edition (Fodor's Gold Guides)
	Lonely Planet Puerto Rico