Lonely Planet Ecuador & the Galapagos Islands (Travel Guide) Paperback – August 1, 2012

I bought the kindle version of this guide, and I'm in Ecuador using it. This sets a standard for uselessness. The offline maps are unusable: cluttered, uninformative, and undersized and of poor quality. The Google Map feature is almost as bad. It seems to be impossible to save locations on the map to my locations, leaving the user with a clumsy process of doing so manually.The text is minimal, the information about individual places, whether restaurants, museums, churches or whatever is glib and boilerplate.When moving around a city, you want to be able to discover things that are near where you are, but (as an example), Quito, a large and complex city is dealt with as a monolithic entity. I'm staying in the north of the city, and finding a way to orient yourself, let alone learn how to get around the city (the only real advice: take a taxi) is impossible.The table of contents is laughably minimal, and navigating around the book is hard to do.A far, far better option is just to use Google and Trip Advisor, and save the money.

I used this book to prepare for a trip to Cuenca and Quito in May 2018. This edition was published in 2012 and contains a lot of incorrect, poorly organized and out-of-date information regarding restaurants, places to stay, museum/attraction hours and other crucial information like street names and transportation. In 2018, crowd-sourced web tools like trip advisor and google maps are much more useful than one person's opinion. Travel books are good for information about things that don't change from year to year (which is why I gave it two stars not one) but again, you really do need current information for making most decisions about what to do, where to stay and where to eat.

The information is decent. It even includes some potentially useful appendices, such as commonly needed Spanish to English translations.The book is essentially a listing of recommended attractions, with fairly detailed description of the place. These are useful, but I find reading blogs and places like trip advisor gets me just as much, and much more.If you aren't internet savvy I would say this is a GREAT book, but the internet just has more up to date information.

Once I thought that lonely planet was a must... not any more.Information is not updated... There was an extraordinary restaurant in Cuenca, maybe the best restaurant in Ecuador. It was not listed in this book.There are so many pages with hotel descriptions... I don't need that information any more. You can find more information about hotels in other web pages.I used to love lonely planet books... not any more.

This version of the Lonely Plant guide to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands is formatted as an eBook. The guide has a lot of useful information, and it was very convenient to have a eBook guidebook that I could carry around on my iPhone. By using my iPhone, the photographs and maps were in color (unlike my basic Kindle). On the other hand, it was hard to find information because the Table of Contents was very general, and clicking on links made it necessary to go back to the Table of Contents in order to return to the broader topic. Almost all locations and sights required going through "On the Road" from the Table of Contents and then selecting the part of the country and then the sight/location of interest. I think the next generation will be better. This version doesn't really eliminate the need for some other, more traditional form of a guidebook.

In so far as I can find anything in this guide the content is up to the usual good Lonely Planet standard.The difficulty is finding anything in the book. I naively thought that a digital version would be easier to navigate.The Menu button on my Amazon Kindle brings up a list of options starting of course with "Shop in Kindle Store" through to "View Popular Highlights". The "Search This Book" option will brings up every occurrence of a word in the book.If I want to find accommodation options for Quito, typing "Quito" gives 128 pages of hits. Typing "Quito places to stay" is slightly better, only 5 pages.The maps are almost useless.With time it is possible to build up a collection of highlights and notes, but this should not be essential for navigation.Surely it is possible to create a better Kindle guide than this.

I swear by Lonely Planet guides and use them whenever we travel. Good info, good maps and usually good picks for the accomodation but the ebook i found hard to use. No index or page nos. Cant just flick through, backwards and forwards. Can save with a bookmark but the words that mark the place arent always the ones that help you know why you saved it. The section you want is halfway down th page but the words refer to something at the top of the page!!! Maybe the book should come with a how to use!!!!! Much lighter having my guides on my ipad but then I wont be looking them up on a street corner will I !

I usually love the Loney Planet books but this one is outdated! Obviously the maps are accurate but the pricing is totally off, bus schedules are wrong, as well as descriptions of a lot of the towns and activities. Also this book is missing a lot of basic key info such as the fact that the tap water is not drinkable in Ecuador. That's kind of a big thing to leave out. Overall, if you're looking for a book for the maps and some basic info it's fine, but it's not comprehensive by any means and it's definitely outdated.

I travelled to Ecuador and the Galapapagos islands from March-May 2015 and found this book to be very outdated for such a rapidly developing and changing country. There is wifi to be found everywhere and the Ecuadorian people are very helpful, friendly and honest so I found this book to be redundant (I have depended heavily on lonely plantets in the past). If your trip is mainly to the Galápagos Islands this book is particularly useless and I recommend using trip advisor for recommendations and the many sources of information online and in the islands themselves.

I like Lonely Planet guides and this was no exception. I spend a lot of time before trips going through these guides to maximise the time I am there. Sorting out what excursions are must do and which are not is best done at home with plenty of time rather than under the pressure of a tourist/sales guide.

This guide book provides a comprehensive guide to Ecuador and the Galapagos.Excellent recommendations and easy to use with good detailed maps.If you prefer a guide book with more prose and detailed descriptions perhaps the best option would be the rough guide series. However the maps and extensive recommendations in this guide put it above in my opinion.The paperback version is considerably more useful than the Kindle version

As always, Amazon and Lonely Planet both live up to expectation. The delivery was fast and ahead of the promised date and Lonely Planet, in my opinion, is simply the best travel guide on the market v

Brilliant book providing all the information I required for my trip. The book arrived promptly and is recommended as a good buy.