Travel to Mexico

Hidden Puerto Vallarta: Including the Bahia de Banderas and Sierra Madre Mountains (Hidden Travel)

Format: Paperback
Author: Richard Harris
ReleaseDate: 28 July, 2006
Publisher: Ulysses Press
Rating:

Some good info, lots of mistakes
It does contain a few usefull tips about what one might do off the beaten path. Overall the guide is only marginally usefull.
There is something troubling about the book though. There a number of mistakes in the book that could only be made by someone pretending to have done things like riding city buses or searching out local fare without actually having done those things.
At one point the author suggests you can catch a city bus from the airport but need exact change. You can indeed catch a municipal bus from the airport, but you don't need exact change. The drivers all make change within reason as they do everywhere in Mexico.
In the dining section the author mentions that it's hard to find mexican food in Vallarta. This claim is absurd. There small mexican restaurants all over Vallarta. Vallarta is after all a destination for mexican vacationers too, and there is a solid demand for decent mexican food, especially Jalisciense food (e. g. birria), a demand met by hundreds of small to medium size restuarants all over town. There are even a couple of large fondas serving basic mexican food to hundreds every evening.
Another error in the book makes me think the author doesn't even spend much time in Mexico at all. He mentions the Cinco de Mayo holiday and says that it celebrates the battle of Puebla, which it does, but he says that the battle ended french occupation, which it didn't. The Battle of Puebla was a victory against the french, but at the beginning of the intervention. The intervention followed, with Maximillian installed as emperor etc. The battle is celebrated as a holiday becuase immediately after the battle Juarez declared it a holiday and no one has dared to remove it, even though the battle itself was ultimately of little historical consequence.
Overall the book gives the impression of a not so astute armchair traveller who really doesn't have that much to offer in terms of how to enjoy Vallarta in a less touristy sort of way. More troubling than the errors that pepper the book is the sense that one gets that the author is trying to pass himself off as something he is not: an expert in travelling off the beaten path in Mexico.

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

	Lonely Planet Puerto Vallarta & Pacific Mexico (Lonely Planet Travel Guides)
	Fodor's Puerto Vallarta 2007: With Excursions to Guadalajara, San Blas, and Inland Mountain Towns (Fodor's Gold Guides)
	Frommer's Portable Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo & Guadalajara (Frommer's Portable)