The kind you buy in a second hand store
Mar. 8th, 2007 07:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaWhen venturing off to foreign parts on holidays, and planning your own routes, accommodation, etc, guidebooks become invaluable. Unless you're on the way round the world, staying in the sort of hostels which operate unofficial exchanges as people swap countries, you have to pop down the shops and buy one yourself.
On the day ChrisC and I chose to venture to Blackwells, they were sold out of Rough Guides to New Zealand. The Landmark Visitor Guide we'd had in Iceland had proved really useful as a driving companion (having various suggested things to stop at and side quests to undertake for each major road route), but doesn't seem to extend as far afield as NZ. Having riffled through the selection Blackwells did have, we opted for the Footprint Guide as seeming like the best of the bunch.
Mainly we were checking for layout of information, and making sure it avoided a particular issue. Previously, we've occasionally encountered city guidebooks which (for example) list restaurants by type, not by area. I think it may be Time Out guides that do this, I'm not sure. Which is fine if, on holiday, you often think "I wish to eat the best Chinese food this city has to offer", but useless if you more commonly think "I'd like a reasonable meal close to where I am now".
Although the Footprint Guide seemed to contain a good bunch of useful information, once on holiday I rapidly became disenchanted with its incompetent indexing and cross-reference. It's no good saying "see also page 698" when you actually mean page 705. And surely, with today's publishing packages, it's trivial to get references correct even for home-produced documents, never mind commercial products.
In addition, it doesn't have a very extensive index. For example, White Island is a major tourist attraction, but doesn't feature in the Footprint Guide's index. If you read the entry for the coastal port from which boats to White Island depart all the information is there, but that's no good if you're not aware you have to look it up under Whakatane. Many other things were covered, but proved hard to find without index entries.
However, we met guidebook Waterloo in a place called Wanaka. Setting off on a hike (The Rob Roy Track, which was great and will hopefully feature in a report all of its own when there are photos) we were told by the guide book to drive (or arrange transport) to Raspberry Creek Carpark. Which was fine, except it didn't tell us where Raspberry Creek Carpark was, other than "about an hour" away from Wanaka.
Fortunately, Wanaka doesn't have many roads, and there was only one going in the right direction, ie into Mt Aspiring National Park. A handy tourist map we located did show us the exact route and, beyond telling us that it was 54km and about an hour's drive (a suspiciously long time for the distance), left us to it.
Now, if I was a guidebook aimed at people who may well, for example, be driving hired cars, or camper vans, I'd mention that the last 33km of the road is gravel, not nice friendly tarmac. I'd probably mention the eight fords, as well, particularly since they rapidly become impassable to ordinary cars in wet weather. I'd certainly mention that there are road signs up warning you of severe risk of damage to your vehicle (about that big shiny hired car we had...).
So, while trying to persuade Ngaio (the aforementioned shiny Nissan) to drive through fords to which she wasn't terribly suited, we had a good shout at Mr Footprint. I'm aware that they're trying to pack a lot in, but a couple of extra adjectives could surely have been squeezed in ?
Later, when there was four of us, I challenged other's guidebooks to provide better information.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
quantumboo's Lonely Planet again offered merely that it was an hour out of Wanaka. Frances' Rough Guide was the closest to useful, stating that it was an hour's drive up the unsealed Mt Aspiring Rd. Given that it was easily the worst road we drove on - and is clearly used by tourists, not just hardy locals - I'm genuinely surprised that no guides think it worth mentioning.
So, a question to all guidebook-purchasing travellers:
[Poll #942323]
Those mentioned in the poll are the only ones I'm aware of as "known brands", but that may be my travelling ignorance. If anyone's got reasons for their choice, I'm curious to hear them.
On the day ChrisC and I chose to venture to Blackwells, they were sold out of Rough Guides to New Zealand. The Landmark Visitor Guide we'd had in Iceland had proved really useful as a driving companion (having various suggested things to stop at and side quests to undertake for each major road route), but doesn't seem to extend as far afield as NZ. Having riffled through the selection Blackwells did have, we opted for the Footprint Guide as seeming like the best of the bunch.
Mainly we were checking for layout of information, and making sure it avoided a particular issue. Previously, we've occasionally encountered city guidebooks which (for example) list restaurants by type, not by area. I think it may be Time Out guides that do this, I'm not sure. Which is fine if, on holiday, you often think "I wish to eat the best Chinese food this city has to offer", but useless if you more commonly think "I'd like a reasonable meal close to where I am now".
Although the Footprint Guide seemed to contain a good bunch of useful information, once on holiday I rapidly became disenchanted with its incompetent indexing and cross-reference. It's no good saying "see also page 698" when you actually mean page 705. And surely, with today's publishing packages, it's trivial to get references correct even for home-produced documents, never mind commercial products.
In addition, it doesn't have a very extensive index. For example, White Island is a major tourist attraction, but doesn't feature in the Footprint Guide's index. If you read the entry for the coastal port from which boats to White Island depart all the information is there, but that's no good if you're not aware you have to look it up under Whakatane. Many other things were covered, but proved hard to find without index entries.
However, we met guidebook Waterloo in a place called Wanaka. Setting off on a hike (The Rob Roy Track, which was great and will hopefully feature in a report all of its own when there are photos) we were told by the guide book to drive (or arrange transport) to Raspberry Creek Carpark. Which was fine, except it didn't tell us where Raspberry Creek Carpark was, other than "about an hour" away from Wanaka.
Fortunately, Wanaka doesn't have many roads, and there was only one going in the right direction, ie into Mt Aspiring National Park. A handy tourist map we located did show us the exact route and, beyond telling us that it was 54km and about an hour's drive (a suspiciously long time for the distance), left us to it.
Now, if I was a guidebook aimed at people who may well, for example, be driving hired cars, or camper vans, I'd mention that the last 33km of the road is gravel, not nice friendly tarmac. I'd probably mention the eight fords, as well, particularly since they rapidly become impassable to ordinary cars in wet weather. I'd certainly mention that there are road signs up warning you of severe risk of damage to your vehicle (about that big shiny hired car we had...).
So, while trying to persuade Ngaio (the aforementioned shiny Nissan) to drive through fords to which she wasn't terribly suited, we had a good shout at Mr Footprint. I'm aware that they're trying to pack a lot in, but a couple of extra adjectives could surely have been squeezed in ?
Later, when there was four of us, I challenged other's guidebooks to provide better information.
quantumboo's Lonely Planet again offered merely that it was an hour out of Wanaka. Frances' Rough Guide was the closest to useful, stating that it was an hour's drive up the unsealed Mt Aspiring Rd. Given that it was easily the worst road we drove on - and is clearly used by tourists, not just hardy locals - I'm genuinely surprised that no guides think it worth mentioning.So, a question to all guidebook-purchasing travellers:
[Poll #942323]
Those mentioned in the poll are the only ones I'm aware of as "known brands", but that may be my travelling ignorance. If anyone's got reasons for their choice, I'm curious to hear them.
