Puerto Rico Off the Beaten Path, 6th: A Guide to Unique Places (Off the Beaten Path Series)

This book was incredibly awful. If you consider golf courses and staying only on the main roads "off the beaten path" then this book is for you. I'm not sure the author has any clue who his audience is. We are staying in 2 different places in PR and the author does not even mention the first area. Places to stay or restaurants around the area I guess have no value to him. Reading the book and following the map were easy to do- he started in San Juan and worked his way around the island ONLY on the perimeter highways. I'm mad I bought this book, because I was really excited about finding lovely treasures not many other americans have seen. I hate touristy places, why leave america to see a bunch of other americans standing around? I want some Puerto Rican culture, and this book does not offer it.

As a native Puerto Rican who know lives in the States, I wanted to rediscover Puerto Rico on my yearly visits. With this book, I have found places I knew nothing about and loved them. I only pick one or two every time I go, and my mom anxiously awaits where I will take her next (even though she lives there!) If you like culture, history and the not-so-popular and yet very interesting and beautiful places, this book is the ticket. With that said it also includes more popular places that I have always loved. This review is based on activities and not hotels or restaurants.

I suppose this book would've been more appreciated had we not also had Fodor's guide. Since we found Fodor's to be better, we mostly used this book to add a second opinion for resturants. What was good about this book was that it named A LOT of places in Puerto Rico so you we had no shortage of suggestions for places to eat, etc, and it had a light, entertaining style. I suppose it was better than Fodor's for the variety suggestions (and Fodor's seemed to prefer expensive places that we found to be so boring compared to the cheap local eateries). What was bad was that the stream-of-conciousness writing in "Beaten Path" didn't seem very studious in comparison, so it was harder to determine whether we wanted to follow it, or not. Rather than a few sentences, it seemed like each place got 1 adjective before the author moved on to something else.