Cultured Travel Guide Books - Frommer's Chile & Easter Island, 1st Edition (Frommer's Complete) |
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List Price: $22.99
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 918
EAN: 9780470128169
ISBN: 047012816X
Label: Frommers
Manufacturer: Frommers
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 448
Publication Date: 2007-07-17
Publisher: Frommers
Studio: Frommers |
| Spotlight Customer Reviews: |
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Frommer's Chile & Easter Island
Comment: We are planning a trip to Chile and the information in this guide nicely compliments our other guide to Chile by Insight Guide. We recommend both; one is great for pictures and the Frommer's Guide is packed with valuable travel recommendations.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: marginal Easter Island coverage
Comment: As the author of the newly-revised "Complete Guide to Easter Island" I believe I can say with some authority that I am qualified to comment on the Easter Island portion of this book and I might not feel so strongly about doing so if the title of the book didn't include "Easter Island".
With the release of its first edition of "Chile and Easter Island", Frommer's has joined the community of guidebook publishers to offer coverage of, duh, Chile and Easter Island, though in keeping with many such guidebooks -- Moon Handbooks and Lonely Planet among them -- there is an inexplicably inadequate and disproportionate percentage of space devoted to Easter Island despite the fact that "Easter Island" shares half the book's title. (Note, by the way, that this review focuses on the Easter Island portion of the book and does not address the coverage of Chile in general -- so please keep that in mind before turning on Flame Mode.) As for the coverage here, 12.5 pages out of 483 are devoted to Easter Island, which represents only 2.6%. Compare this with Moon Handbooks Chile and Easter Island at 3% and Lonely Planet's Chile and Easter Island at 3.7% and it doesn't seem too out of line. However, there's more to coverage than the number of pages. Moreover, and interestingly enough, despite the absence of "Easter Island" in the title of Moon Handbooks South Pacific or Moon Handbooks Tahiti or even Insight's Chile, the number of pages devoted to Easter Island in these works is much more generous at 21, 23, and 21 pages, respectively. Even looking at more than half a dozen major recent guidebooks by number of pages shows that Frommer's is below the 17.4 page average.
As a new entry in guidebooks with Easter Island coverage I'm inclined to be more forgiving, except that it seems evident the authors failed to learn from earlier and better works on the subject, such by David Stanley or Wayne Bernhardson -- authors who seem to have a handle on what Easter Island is about, not just what it is to visit the place. Thus, what is particularly damning about this first Frommer's edition is the relative absence of anything about the people of Easter Island; it is informational about a visit, perhaps even a bit abstract, but little more. Still, the text is reasonably well written and informative and appears to be fairly up-to-date, except for a few gaffes (they pluralize some Rapanui words like "moai" by erroneously using an "s" -- Rapanui has no such letter in its alphabet); they make the same stupid statement many authors ignorantly make about Ahu Akivi being the "only ahu facing out to sea" (when in fact it, like all other ahu, face inland to ceremonial centers); there is an inane reference to the Te Pito te Kura stone as being magnetic, which is sensational at best because much of the geology of island has magnetic properties; and they employ the usual blather about the stonework at Vinapu giving rise to theories about South American connections to Easter Island (but without explaining why such theories are not only incorrect but have been abandoned).
The authors wisely recommend that visitors rent a vehicle to get the most out of the island rather than relying solely on local guide services, though they appropriately heap high praise on Ramon Edmunds and Josie Nahoe Mulloy of Haumaka Archaeological Tours -- and they rightfully observe that even four days is barely enough time to see what the island has to offer. They also note that one can and should walk the streets of Hanga Roa rather than having to rely on other transportation, but oddly enough they devote virtually no space to shopping for souvenirs, checking out the feria, or mentioning why one should experience the island's church on Sunday mornings. Neither do they devote much coverage to "night life" but that may be just as well given the sedate contrast between the restaurants and the raging intensity of the discos on the weekends.
As with other, similar guidebooks, this one divides accommodations by price range, though departing from their own convention, they do not divide dining this way, despite the fact that there are big differences from, say, Merahi Ra'a (which is modest and relatively inexpensive) and Te Moana (which is fancy and expensive). As is typical with many tour books about Easter Island, they rave about La Taverne du Pêcheur probably because it has become chic to do so rather than acknowledge the banal truth about its pricey food, its pathetically slow service, and its needlessly surly owner. (With alternatives like the recently-opened Au Bout du Monde, La Taverne hardly has a monopoly on French cuisine on the island and the quality of food and service at the former could very well run the latter out of business.) The book also sub-divides the island into South Coast, North of Hanga Roa, South of Hanga Roa, and Northeast Coast, with routine if woefully brief information as to what's available to see in these regions, and, with only a single page devoted to rudimentary maps of the island and Hanga Roa, one hopes the visitor will have another guidebook or other resources to turn to before planning a trip to or arriving on the island. There is brief mention of the Biblioteca William Mulloy, MAPSE, and outdoor activities like horseback riding and scuba/snorkeling, though the statement that, because vehicular access to places like Terevaka has been prohibited, "some locals still sneak up" to Terevaka "in a 4×4" is irresponsible to mention, as if it were a tacit encouragement to violate this prohibition.
In short, this first venture by Frommer's barely meets the minimum standards for coverage of Easter Island, despite such high billing in the title of the work. Since there are many other, better works available, and since the authors apparently didn't see fit to turn to them to make their own guidebook better, to say nothing of the question of just how much time they spent on the island itself (because it doesn't appear to have made it onto the pages of the book), it seems they merely wish to compete with guidebooks using similar names -- but the similarly shallow depth of information contained in this guidebook will ultimately make for a disappointing visit by anyone solely relying on it for a visit to our favorite little island.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Best Chile guidebook
Comment: I just went guidebook hunting at the local bookstore, and I settled on Frommer's Chile & Easter Island.. It's the most recently updated, and that makes a big difference. Santiago is in the midst of finishing (and beginning) some very big infrastructure projects. For example, Santiago has a new modern (but very confusing) bus system, and the metro more than doubled in miles over the past year. This Frommers guide has a great color map with metro stops in the front cover.
The info in the Lonely Planet and other guidebooks is a couple years old. Plus the Frommers book seems to have the best information about private tour operators.
Other bonuses include a chapter on Ushuaia, Argentina.
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| Editorial Reviews: |
| According to the Latin Business Chronicle, Chile is the third most popular South American destination and had 1.8 million visitors in 2005, 10.6% more than in 2004. The 2003 designation of Valparaiso as a UNESCO World Heritage site, increased interest in Chile's wine industry and in adventure travel to Patagonia, plus a continued fascination with Easter Island all contribute to the rise in tourism. Chile is one of the most stable South American countries and appeals to a variety of vacationers with romantic beach holidays, wine-focused vacations, snow sport options, alpine attractions, and desert tours.
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