well, i used lp's for india, oz, fiji, thailand and peru and all was fine. but this lp bolivia (6th = LAST edition) is just "·%·%&%. so many false information, maps etc i could puke a lot! im just in rurrenabaque. the map is just a piece of "·$$·!" hotels are missing, agencies and restaurants displayed at wrong places, i wonder what comes next...
the next annoying thingy: why are all prices given in US!??!?! nobody pays here with US (ok, those gringos probably will) also temperatures in fahrenheit and distances in foot. sorry gringos, its not that ALL ppl in the world r using that odd units...
well...hope i could leave some steam of my tank...
p.s. i know thats impossible to deliver faultless information but since im in bolivia THIS LP annoys me a lot
guidebooks usually always use prices in dolars for Southamerica. With the history of inflation in these contries it would be worse with prices in local currency.
actually prices are pretty stable in Bolivia - exchange rate Boliviano- US $ basically hasn't changed since 3 years - 6 th edition got published 2004 , didn't it? flipped thru it , found plenty of mistakes..
@nahuel if prices for bolivanos increase prices in dollars get false also, its just two sides of the coin. its just annoying that i have to convert BS into euro, from euro to US to check if its ok. sorry, not very handy at all since rates like 1:10,4 or 1:1,34 suck...
the map has another twist: the viewpoint is 180° on the other side of the city...is there any email id where u can report bogus information since info@lop...com wont work i guess :o
Yeah and the 5th, 4th, 3rd editions as well. I remember rewrinting sections in the older LPs. It's Bolivia and you really can't count on a lot of info to be the same tommorrow in this country cause, well tommorrow is mañana is about all I ever figured out. Relax and enjoy the confussion for what it's worth.
More venting: yes, there are a few cases in the Bolivia LP where some restaurants are placed on the map a few blocks away from their actual locations, but the addresses are correct. Due to my around-the-world travel I've been using a lot of LP books recently and Bolivia is one of the poorest when it comes to writing. The book is full of bad jokes and some jokes are even repeated in multiple places. The one that comes to mind is that bit about the Oruro to Uyuni train being "s-l-o-w" (the dashes must be needed so that reader gets a deeper grasp of the speed of that train...) and being compared with "the little engine that could". If I remember well (I abandoned that book after leaving Bolivia) both these LP funnies show twice on the same page in the southern sierra chapter and one more time in the directory chapter. Does LP employ any editors at all?
The worst thing is the author of LP Bolivia had opportunities to amend certain sections of the book and choose not to. Especially the information re the Oxygen bar in ram jams, la paz. 5usd for 10mins, she wrote 10 usd for 5 mins... that has done some damage to their business. She also slagged off Sol y luna bar, saying the food was very average. Anyone who has been there, knows the food is good quality for bolivia.
It seems to be the maps are always wrong in many cases. Its also annoying when they print the big map across 2 pages, leaving a section in the fold missing or out of alignment. For instance in La paz, the street loayza is in the fold so when people say point to where the loki hostel is in la paz, you have to say, somewhere in that gap of the page.
Leaving one person to write one of these books in my opinion is just plain wrong. All prices, facts etc need to be rechecked and to do that properly the person needs at least 6 months back in the country or needs to live here in bolivia like I do, A flying 2 month visit that she did was not sufficient.
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