No comments about Insight Compact Guide Antigua & Barbuda (Insight Compact Guides Antigua).

5 comments about Best Nightmare on Earth: A Life in Haiti (Destinations).

1. I just had to respond because the only response posted is so off the mark! Gold clearly has a deep love & respect for Haiti & Haitians. He also has a wicked sense of humour & he apparently does not feel the need to whitewash what he sees. We must have read two different books!



2. First of all your ideas are not well founded since you did not live in Haiti long enough to place a judgement or an opinion.Your grounds are very weak when you see only one part of Haiti. Being like a horse on a race track, the author is only focusing on what you may consider the worst, I would like to know when writters are going to start publishing the right stuff about a third world country.



3. This is one of the most compelling book that I ever read about Haiti. Mr. Gold is funny and objective. One could feel his love for Haiti popping out of the pages; he is not just another foreigner out to make a quick buck. Although his experiences in the book were limited to the capital, he gave a vivid account because he was in the thick of things. When I checked with family and friends on the veracity of some of Mr. Gold's claims, he seemed to have hit right on the money. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves Haiti.



4. This is an amazing book. I have traveled to Hait 5 times, my longest stay being four months. This book made me feel as if I was back in the country I love so much. I would recommend this book to anyone who's heart has been grasped by this country.



5. While making no claims to be objective, this colorful account of Gold's 2 years in Haiti and dozens of trips in the 50 years since then, captures all the wild contradictions of the magical but suffering country.

No comments about Insight Pocket Guide Cayman Islands (Insight Pocket Guides Cayman Islands).

No comments about The Amazon: Land without History (Library of Latin America).

2 comments about Adventure Guide to the Virgin Islands (Caribbean Guides Series).

1. Adventure Guide to the Virgin Islands is packed full of helpful tips on restaurants, resorts and activities.



2. Explore the Virgin Islands IFifth Edition), also available on Amazon.com, is the newer, better version of this title. All the same information plus much more (better photos, better maps, completely updated) and useful tips. Free online updates available.

5 comments about Puerto Rico Off the Beaten Path: A Guide to Unique Places.

1. Being born and raised in Puerto Rico,I thought I knew all the good places to visit. I bought this book with a little skepticism and what a wonderful surprise it was. The author definitely goes off the beaten path and the tourist traps. My husband and I just came back from there and the directions and the restaurants that the author mentioned were excellent.

   If you definitely want to explore the richness of the island and the diversified environments that it offers, this book is for you. I highly recommend it. We took it with us on our recent visit and we really had a very enjoyable time.




2. The most helpful thing about this book was the lists of places to stay at the end of every region-discussion. Other than that, "Explore Puerto Rico, 5th Edition" had almost all the same sites & activities listed. For the sake of traveling lightly, we ended up not even bringing "Off the Beaten Path" with us, relying instead on "Explore Puerto Rico" (which has its own issues, see my review on that page for details).



3. Noticing this book was a recent guide to Puerto Rico written by a woman, my wife insisted on buying it. We both enjoyed reading it for its combination of listings and colorful background notes. It makes you realize there is an island and culture worth exploring. We liked the descriptions that helped us better understand the way of life and why things are what they are. We decided to stay at smaller hotels where we heard Spanish and could eat local food. It let us appreciate what a fascinating and friendly place the island is. This book really did encourage us to get "off the beaten path."



4. In general, I like to avoid touristy spots, and bought this book in the hope that it would recommend places to visit. The format of this book is like a long essay, which makes it difficult to read, and not very useful as a guidebook. It goes something like: "if you take this street, first you'll pass this restaurant, which some people like for the chicken, and then this museum, etc" without giving definitive recommendations and must-sees for the tourist with limited time. I'm glad that my boyfriend brought a Fodor's, which was pretty comprehensive. But the best part of our trip was at an ecolodge that was very much off the beaten path (45 min on a narrow dirt road, up into the El Yunque rainforest), which I found by doing good old web research (search "elena el yunque").



5. Perhaps in the San Juan area, where I have not stayed, this book provides "off the beaten path" places to visit and sights to see, however, for Ponce and south Puerto Rico I was sourly disappointed. All the spots mentioned were pretty much the standard found in any other guidebook.
   
   Furthermore, there is much to be said for the writing style. As others have mentioned, the book is a long essay that needs to be read at least in chapters. So you cannot just use it as a quick reference, which is really difficult while on the road.
   
   Lastly, it is near impossible to find anything using this book alone (and not that I as a woman am bashing a woman writer), BUT the book comes without MAPS or any other helpful directions about how to get even to the most popular touristy places. Basically, the directions that go something like: "On the way from Boqueron beach, make a quick right by the giant cactus and the rock and the what-is-it will be right there" JUST DO NOT WORK.
   
   Plus, it misses some really phenomenal things such as cock fights (Salinas) or how unbelievably BAD Puerto Rican food is and where to go to find pretty decent international food.
   
   For better guides and less headache, pick another.

2 comments about The Butterfly Farm (The Harriet McIver Mystery Series #1).

1. Working for the San Francisco Town Crier magazine as a travel writer, widow Harriet McIver is sailing on the cruise ship Sun Spirit towards Costa Rica. Her boss asks Harriet to keep an eye on her niece, Carly Lowe, on the tour also as part of a student contingency from Sheperton College. When Carly fails to return to the vessel, no one except her roommate Zoe Shore and Harriet seem worried.
   
   That night, passenger Harry Eason is found dead in a swimming pool with the deadly, if swallowed in large quantities, blue morpho butterfly nearby. Former SFPD Detective Adam Hartsfield is on board working a private investigation, but seems disinterested in the death though he tells Harriet that the victim was a sleuth who rescued youngsters from cults. As the vessel stops for time at a nearby health spa with a famous butterfly farm, Harriet knows something sinister has happened to Carly and plans to find and rescue the teen.
   
   Though the suspense takes a while to get started, THE BUTTERFLY FARM is a terrific amateur sleuth thriller that once the accelerator is pressed takes off and never slows down until the final twist. Harriet is a noble protagonist, a West Coast Jessica Fletcher refusing to back down in spite of warnings especially from Adam and understanding how treacherous the situation is. The look at Costa Rica enhances a wonderful tale starring a heroine who not only keeps the plot focused, but deserves future travelogues for armchair mystery aficionados.
   
   Harriet Klausner



2. In her first book in the Harriet MacIver Mystery series, veteran faith fiction novelist Diane Noble tackles a heady mix of murder and scientific research gone awry against the lush backdrop of Costa Rica.
   
   The just-widowed Harriet MacIver is a brand new travel writer with a fear of flying and destined to be the next big thing in the travel world. Harriet doesn't go anywhere without her lumbering, 20-pound-plus scary feline named Gus (short for asparagus). When her assigning editor at the Town Crier newspaper sends her (and Gus) to cover a Costa Rican cruise on a rusty tub of a ship, the Sun Spirit, she's saddled with the dual task of keeping an eye on the editor's college-age daughter, Carly Lowe.
   
   It's a long way from the glamorous assignment Harriet envisioned. A murder on board is a grim foreshadowing of what's to come. Things get nastier when Carly doesn't turn up after a trip ashore, and, as Harriet discovers, she's not the first girl to disappear in Costa Rica from Carly's Florida college. Then Kate Rivers, a classmate, also disappears. And their frumpy fellow student Zoë Shire seems to know more than she's telling.
   
   Two rather dashing older men are on Harriet's radar screen: one a Nobel Prize contender for his scientific research (can you see what's coming here?) and another who has a checkered past and a poignant story. When the trail of the missing girls leads to a butterfly farm, Harriet must decide which man to trust. And if she makes the wrong choice, the consequences will be deadly.
   
   Noble portrays Harriet MacIver as a cross between Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax and Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Christie's Miss Marple is fond of saying she learns everything she knows from observing life in a small English village; Harriet likes to point out that "Raising a family teaches you a lot about life, things like passion for what matters and stick-to-it-iveness to see a project through." Mrs. Pollifax is a previously depressed grandmotherly detective with a penchant for hats who travels the globe for the CIA; Harriet is a slightly depressed grandmotherly travel writer with a love for a ballcap (emblazoned with "You Go, Girl") who visits exotic locales as part of her work. Unlike Pollifax and Marple, however, MacIver flies airplanes and is up front and out there with her Christian faith.
   
   Noble incorporates the repeating motif of the poisonous blue morpho butterfly throughout the book, which is a great touch mystery aficionados will appreciate. However, the reader is required to suspend disbelief on several plot points --- that the disappearing popular and attractive girls from the same college would all share a common blood type and genetic markers, just for starters. There are some lovely passages ("Ribbons of gray mist and fog clung to the dark water") but the story could have benefited from a good tightening of at least 50 pages, if not more, and the action slows in places.
   
   Yet it's always refreshing to have the central character be closer to senior citizen than twenty-something, and the interesting details, nice rapport between the college students and Harriet, and current interest in stem cell research (Noble never really states a definitive position on this, by the way) will appeal to many mystery readers. Fans of Noble's previous books, including THE STORYTELLER and her California Chronicles trilogy, should enjoy this one.
   
   --- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby

1 comments about Adventures in Nature Caribbean.

1. My wife and I are active travelers and enjoy planning our own trips. When we decided to visit the Caribbean we were not sure which island to visit, but wanted someplace with lots of natural diversity. "Caribbean Adventures in Nature" helped us select a great adventure in the Windward Islands. We looked at dozens of other guides which were heavy on hotels and restaurants, but light on good practical outdoor information and opted for this guide. It is jam packed with all the information you need to plan every aspect of your adventure including, email addresses, web sites, operators, etc. The information is well organized and the down-to-earth writing style makes it an easy read. If you are planning a foray into the Caribbean then this book is all you will need to plan your adventure.

No comments about The Last Voyage of Drake and Hawkins.

No comments about Island Hotel Stories.