New Best Guide to Nicaragua
December 5th, 2008 Posted in Cheap Latin America Travel, Travel bargains, Travel books
I recently got my hands on the brand spanking new 3rd edition of Moon Handbooks Nicaragua, by Joshua Berman and Randall Wood. In some destinations it’s a toss-up as to which travel guide is the best, but for Nicaragua this is definitely the one to have.
Joshua has written a couple of stories for Perceptive Travel before, but he and Randall were Peace Corps workers in Nicaragua before the two of them dove in and put out the first edition, which was instantly the most thorough guidebook to the country. Now that they’ve had some time to work on refinement—while keeping the original team intact—it’s simply gotten better.
When they put out that first guide, almost nobody was going to Nicaragua. Now it’s quite the hotspot, showing up in every travel magazine and on TV shows. It’s not just surfers hanging out at San Juan del Sur. Still, this is one of the best countries to visit if you want to feel like a true explorer. It’s a rather large chunk of land, but most tourists stick to a pretty small section of it.
This guide also assumes you don’t need to see the price of everything listed, which may bother some used to the LP format. The whole country is a screaming bargain though, so there aren’t many unhappy surprises. There are prices posted for the ferry across the lake to Ometepa: $2 for the lower deck, $3 for the upper deck. Go for it big spender!
You will find more than 450 pages of great info though, including interesting sidebars on the culture and adventure activities other guidebook writers don’t even know about yet. It’s far more comprehensive than anything else available and yet it’s priced 25% less than the Footprint guide.
The Moon website has some good sample itineraries posted as well, which are quite helpful if you don’t know your Matagalpa from your Masaya. They give a good sense of what you can fit in during a given time.
Keep up with the latest on Joshua Berman’s blog or on GoToNicaragua.com.
Related post: Useful Nicaragua Travel Sites.
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3 Responses to “New Best Guide to Nicaragua”
By Frank on Dec 8, 2008
Hey we are heading to Nicaragua for new years. We will be in the Corn Islands for most of the trip (our hotel is only $34 a night for a beach front room). We will be doing a video there as part of our video series on our website. We will also write about it too.
By Joshua Berman on Dec 10, 2008
Thanks for the kind words, Tim! We also encourage our readers to gather and discuss their travels, ask questions, and post links to their travelogues at:
http://www.GoToNicaragua.com/
¡Felize viaje!
By Ron Mader on Dec 12, 2008
This is simply one of the best travel guidebooks available. Kudos to the authors and publisher.