Product Description

Discover Brazil

Wander the streets of bohemian Lapa, where samba spills from every doorway
Swim eyeball-to-eyeball with hundreds of exotic fish in crystalline waters
Brave near-vertical descents on a wind-whipped dune buggy ride
Sling a hammock and relax as your riverboat glides up the Amazon

In This Guide:

Seven authors, 375 days of in-country research, 33 types of transport (including water buffalo, mine car and canoe)
50% more coverage of chic, dynamic Sao Paulo
A samba musician, a wildlife tour guide and other locals introduce you to their Brazil

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #65100 in Books
• Brand: Lonely Planet
• Published on: 2008-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 768 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781741042979
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"Nobody covers the world like Lonely Planet." -- New York Post, May 2004

Nobody covers the world like Lonely Planet.' --New York Post, May 2004

From the Publisher
Who We Are
At Lonely Planet, we see our job as inspiring and enabling travelers to connect with the world for their own benefit and for the benefit of the world at large.

What We Do
* We offer travelers the world's richest travel advice, informed by the collective wisdom of over 350 Lonely Planet authors living in 37 countries and fluent in 70 languages.
* We are relentless in finding the special, the unique and the different for travellers wherever they are.
*We update our guidebooks by visiting thousands of places in person to get the details right and tell it as it is.
* We always offer the trusted filter for those who are curious, open minded and independent.
* We challenge our growing community of travelers; leading debate and discussion about travel and the world.
* We tell it like it is without fear or favor in service of the travelers; not clouded by any other motive.

What We Believe
We believe that travel leads to a deeper cultural understanding and compassion and therefore a better world.

Customer Reviews

Restored my liking of LP
After a mixed experience with LP's new edition for Morocco earlier this year, I hesitantly agreed to purchase another LP for my trip this summer to Brazil's northeast, specifically Salvador, Recife, and Sao Luiz. I was not disappointed.

LP continues to give budget travelers a good feel for the communities they enter, and in this case, has relatively accurate lodging and restaurant descriptions. While at times I wished for a fuller description of places other than their simply being another "quaint" and "small" fishing village, I never found myself cursing the book for leading me to a place I did not want to be in.

I would definitely recommend this guide, although its prices are already out of date due to currency fluctuations. A better option for future editions, I believe, would be for prices to be listed in the local currency, reals, rather than in dollars.

Couldn't have done Brazil without it
My husband and I spent 3 weeks traveling around Brazil. Maceió, Salvador, Rio, Blumeneau, and Foz de Iguaçu (Iguazu Falls). We used a travel agent who was from Brazil to book our hotels and flights in advance, but as far as local travel (and in one case, arriving in an airport an hour from our destination city, Blumeneau), we found this book indispensable. For example, it clearly explains how the bus systems work and why you should take them. It also have info in Rio about an airport bus that saved us at least $25, if I remember correctly, in not taking a cab. Recapped the cost of the book right there. Most often, and in spite of my being able to converse in Portuguese, the book was more helpful even than the hotel staff of the hotels where we stayed.

As an earlier reviewer mentioned, prices are completely out of date, due to currency fluctuations, and I agree that listing them in the local currency would have been helpful. Still, since the exchange rate the prices are based on was also posted in the book, it is possible to recreate that information.

As is inevitable with any travel book, some smaller restaurants have closed since publication, and we often relied on locals to give us recommendations (sometimes those recommendations were also in the book, though!). Ditto on a laundry place in Rio. ;) Overall, though, the recommendations in the book allow a tourist to navigate the city without feeling lost and out of place. At least, it did that for us. We used it so extensively that the cover is going in our scrapbook, having been such an integral part of our journey.

Another edition, another chance, another pass
I have been doing Brazil vacations for decades (literally) and have seen every guidebook in the English language. For some reason - perhaps because Brazil is such a big country with a limited English-language guidebook market - publishers have never found it worthwhile to invest money and time into producing a truly first rate guidebook. This latest edition of Lonely Planet is no exception. I cannot endorse ANY of the English language guidebooks out there today as a one stop guidebook(although each has a few redeeming qualities).

So what is a would-be Brazil traveller to do? Do what I have been doing for the last ten years: supplement your English language guidebook with a first rate, up-to-date guidebook from the Quatro Rodas series published in Brazil by Abril publishing. In other words, get an English language guidebook for background information (I prefer the footprint book, but LP is adequate for a broad overview of the country). Then, with a limited reading knowledge of portuguese (how much do you really need to know to be able to look up hotel names, street addresses, and phone numbers, right?) your trip will be made a lot simpler if you get the Quatro Rodas guides. The Quatro Rodas series is constantly being updated, and in my experience provides the widest, most complete, accurate, and thorough coverage of hotels, restaurants, tourist sites, directions, and logistics of any guidebook. And best of all, the Quatro Rodas guides are specialized: on a budget, get "Viajar bem e barato" (requires a bit of portuguese reading ability); visiting specific states, get the state guides for your destinations; doing driving, get their road atlas; and best of all, going to the beach, the get the Brazil beachcomber's bible, the "Guia Praias" (truly one of the most amazing guides in the world!).

So where do you get these books? In any airport book store / news stand. Trust me, your life as a Brazil tourist will be made a lot easier if you learn to use the Quatro Rodas books.