Lonely Planet Puerto Rico (Regional Guide)

 (31 customer reviews)

Randy Peffer's book inspired our family to tour the entire island, not limiting ourselves to a resort where we would be isolated from life on "la isla." With Peffer's advice, we selected paradores, inns, and small hotels on the coast, deep in the mountains, and in Ponce and Old San Juan. In every case, Peffer described the travel, accomodations, culture, recreation and dining options so well that we felt we had a personal introduction to each locale. With a sense of humor and great respect, Peffer prepared us for everything we encountered. His book encouraged us to appreciate and enjoy the differences of another culture. We would definetely have missed out on some great towns, night spots for music, snorkeling, restaurants, and local color without the guide. I would recommend Peffer's as the one must-have book to read when planning the trip as well as consulting daily when touring. By the end of our vacation we were referring to "Randy sez" as if he...Read more

We just came back from a 10 day trip to Puerto Rico (04/21 - 05/01, 2006) and we have to COMPLETELY disagree with the previous review. In fact, we were thinking about burning this LP copy. Don't get us wrong, we own several copies of LP for China, Eucador, South America, Guatamala, and etc. But we have serious reservation about recommending this one to anyone else. Here are some of the reasons:

1. Several budget restarurants in Old San Juan no longer exist. They include St. Germain, Brenda's Cafe, and Los Amigos. It became very frustrating after going to several places and finding out 3/4 of them were closed.

2. The same happened in Ponce, but for hotels. Two out of three hotels listed on pg. 166 (center of Ponce, by the Plaza las Delicias) were not there - they simply don't exist.

3. Now, telephone numbers. we can't say that all of them in the guidebook are wrong, but the ones we called are either disconnected or a wrong number. This goes for the UA...Read more

In general, this Lonely Planet "Puerto Rico" (there are more than one; this one is by Ginger Adams Otis) is overall reasonably accurate and up-to-date as of February 2006. There are a few oddities within, however:

One is the pronounciation of the word for chicken, pollo. As many times as I've been in Puerto Rico, I've never heard it pronounced PO-lyo, as indicated on page 67. It is PO-yo, or sometimes more like PO-djyo. I never heard any Puerto Rican pronounce the "l" sound in this word.

Second, some of the hotel classifications seemed to based on the hotel's self-classifications (or wishful thinking) more than anyone's actual experience. For example, although the author's description is reasonably accurate, on page 95, Otis lumps Hotel El Milano into the same midrange category as El Convento. El Convento is truly upscale, and always has been, both in accommodations and in price. El Milano is very firmly mid-scale in all dimensions.

Of course guides...Read more