Moon Yucatan Peninsula: Including Chiapas (Moon Handbooks)

Long-time travelers to Mexico Liza Prado and Gary Chandler know the best way to experience the Yucatán Peninsula, from exploring Mayan archaeology and culture to diving and snorkeling the world's longest underwater river system. Prado and Chandler include unique trip ideas like The Best of the Yucatán Peninsula and An Eco-Adventure Tour. Packed with information on dining, transportation, and accommodations, Moon Yucatán Peninsula has lots of options for a range of travel budgets. Every Moon guidebook includes recommendations for must-see sights and many regional, area, and city-centered maps. Complete with details on the best beaches and venturing into the more remote regions of Chiapas and Tabasco, Moon Yucatán Peninsula gives travelers the tools they need to create a more personal and memorable experience. With expert writers, first-rate strategic advice, and an essential dose of humor, Moon guidebooks are the cure for the common trip.

 (7 customer reviews)

In preparation for a week-long trip to the Yucatan, I looked through several guidebooks: Frommers fell short, Lonely Planet failed to impress, the Rough Guide was quite good, but Moon was consistently the best. First, it is a very good value: Moon has about 100 pages more than the Rough Guide, and almost 200 more than Lonely Planet and Frommers, all for about the same price. Yet, the book feels no bulkier than its competitors.

Moon takes advantage of this extra space and fills it with good descriptions of the various locations, good maps, and good recommendations of places to eat and sleep. I appreciated the fact that Moon gave recommendations for a wide range of budgets, as many other guides tend to be overly skewed toward one category of traveler to the neglect of others. Partially by design and partially by coincidence, we ended up eating at many of Moon's recommended restaurants and staying at many of the recommended hotels, and had very good experiences at all of...Read more

I found this book much more accessible, helpful, and accurate than the rough guides version. A great balance of historical info, recommendations for sites, hotels, and restaurants, and commentary. I've always been an avid Let's Go fan, but sometimes they get too cheap and hostel-oriented for me. Moon's books (I bought several after this one) seem to represent the cheap/free and off-the-beaten-path attractions equally with choices that are a little more mainstream and comfortable. My only complaint is one that I always seem to have: I would have liked more maps.

I really depended on this book to familiarize myself and get me around Chiapas, and it did a great job. Some reviews of restaurants and hotels were a bit out of date, but, of course, that is normal with a guide book. I found the layout easier to use than Lonely Planet, but they were both good and complimented each other.
My only complaint was the scale of the maps was inaccurate for walking in San Cristobal and distances were a lot farther than I thought when starting out.