Moon Oaxaca (Moon Handbooks)

Overall this is a very good guide, but it does have its defects.

Here are my impressions after having spent nearly 7 weeks in Oaxaca City and State. First, the good points.

It is very extensive and detailed. The author seems to have left almost no stone unturned in the State of Oaxaca.

His local maps are quite good, and very thankfully he had gas stations symbols on his larger maps. On the one occasion that exact distance was important to us, he got it exactly right. He also states how long in time trips will take in the mountains, not just giving the kilometers, which latter are misleading if you don't realize how curvy and slow the roads are. "It's only 100 km from Oaxaca. No time at all."

The book, like other Moon handbooks, has the good menu of `What to do if you have X days' choices.

In addition, Mr. Whipperman provides many interesting sidebars on various topics.

It's easy to sum up the virtues, which...Read more

We got this book and a Mexico travel book before we left for a week trip in Oaxaca. Just myself and my son, age 15. Other than assuring we had a hotel in Oaxaca the first night and a car, we made no other plans.

Old motto: "Good travelers don't know where they are going. Great travelers don't know where they've been." (My personal addition: "And even better travelers have no idea what they just ate!")

While the 'map' in this book is not to scale (some roads cross that do not cross in the maps inside; distances are not to scale) and the hotels/pricing is out of date ... we found this book to be 100% indispensable.

We joking referred to it by saying 'consult the good book' when we were coming up to towns and wondered what, if anything, was there. We found ruins that locals wondered how we found and a few hot springs that were off the beaten track. The one north of Ixtepec (more a warm stream than a bath) was worth the whole trip...Read more

We went to Oaxaca in April with this book. It is very helpful. It contains good information on restaurants and sites, we follow some suggestions on restaurants and they all turned out to be great. The most useful are its maps with stores/restaurants/sites marked on it so that we can walk around the city and track down the dots...It also contains good descriptions on ruins around Oaxaca city that it is perfect for a self-guided tour.