Venezuela (Footprint Handbook) Paperback – 21 Sept. 2015

This 184-pg travel guide was published in 2015. Due to the rapid change in the economic and political situation in Venezuela, many of the mentioned hotels and restaurants have probably changed in quality or even closed. I do not recommend tourism to Venezuela at this time, but I purchased this guide, because I once visited during the early 1990s when Carlos Andres Pérez was president.I am disappointed in this guide, and not only because it is probably out of date because of the rapid change in the situation in Venezuela.The guide is way too short and has too few local maps and other useful details. The orientation map for the entire country is in color but is too small to show enough detail. The map of Isla Margarita is just a basic road map of the entire island. There are no local maps of where the beach resorts and restaurants and other attractions are located in Porlamar and other places on Isla Margarita. There are not enough listings of hotels and restaurants on Margarita, which is Venezuela's main general tourist destination.There are not enough maps of significant cities and towns on the mainland of Venezuela. Only Caracas, Mérida, Ciudad Bolívar, Coro, Cumaná, and Puerto La Cruz seem to have merited basic maps of their tourist areas. The traveler who gets stuck in Maracaibo or Valencia or Ciudad Guayana is outta luck with no map and little information provided about those places.This guide does not give enough discussion in the "Essentials" section to safety and traveler security. The discussion is less than a page, whereas it should be three or four pages. I rarely say something like this about a travel guide, because most guides give sufficient coverage of this topic.Venezuela is markedly different and a lot more dangerous than, say, Italy or Chile, Ecuador, or Uruguay. The traveler in those places should watch for pickpockets and the like, but only rarely would more serious crime be a concern. Practically anywhere in Asia and also non-conflict countries in Africa and the Middle East are safer for the traveler, from a crime standpoint, than is Venezuela.Travel safety discussion should be more extensive in the particular case of Venezuela because Caracas currently has the world's highest murder rate, which is indicative of a dangerous general safety situation. If murderers and kidnappers are going unpunished, the aspiring tourist can easily imagine how common pickpockets and thieves probably are.

It's helpful. It has very good sources of information that it can be helpful for any traveller.