Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75016 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781841622170
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author

Customer Reviews

No other guidebook about Dominica even comes close!
I was born in Dominica and lived there until I was about 22 years old. Recently I went back to Dominica and wanted to rediscover the island; find some old haunts and discover new ones. Because I was planning to photograph Dominica in a way that represents what living and visiting there feels like, I wanted to find a guidebook. I had not lived there for some time, so I felt that I needed one.

This is the only guidebook about Dominica that I've ever read that gives any kind of representation of Dominica that rings true. There were descriptions of all the places that I was used to and additionally, to my surprise, there were all these places that I had never heard of. I went to see a few of them that I would never have found without the book. The descriptions of the places and how to get there were dead on.

I've enthusiastically recommended this book to expatriates who are planning on visiting Dominica with the idea of rediscovering our home and would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone who is planning to visit Dominica. For the low cost of this book, the value and enjoyment of your trip will be immensely increased.

Detailed and practical
We managed to get this new travel guide just before our latest trip to Dominica. I devoured the book! It not only made me more excited about returning to Dominica, it confirmed what I knew and gave me a lot of information for further exploration.

We have travelled extensively and have a substantial library of travel guides. This is among the best. Hard to believe this is Mr. Crask's first effort. It is dead-on accurate and well laid out for finding information quickly. Having visited Dominica previously I understood what a challenge it would be to portray this unique location accurately. Well done!

Detailed, up-to-date, yet uncritical
Dominica is a beautiful island and is much less "developed" than its neighbors. It is little-visited (except by cruise passengers, who stay for 4-5 hours), so it deserves a detailed, attractive, and up-to-date guide such as this.

I used this guide for a one-week trip to Dominica in March 2008. I stayed entirely in the Roseau Valley, in the villages of Wotten Waven and Laudat, so my comments are restricted to my use of the guide for that area.

The guide had two principal shortcomings as I saw it. Most problematic was its unanimously positive attitude toward every attraction, restaurant, and hotel included in the guide. The other were its maps, which I found insufficient.

The book also neglects to compare and contrast destinations for the different types of travellers likely to be reading the book (cruise passengers, wealthy tourists, and backpackers.) Trafalgar Falls are a massive tourist attraction, with hordes of tour buses and tourists clogging the short and unattractive trail to the falls (which, however, are quite beautiful.) The Middleham Falls are a *much* more pleasant destination- but if you are on a tour or are not an experienced hiker you won't get to them. I did not find this distinction noted in the book. Titou Gorge is similarly badly overcrowded and not very interesting, but is not noted as such.

The guide also read more as a promotional brochure for the island than as an honest review of the different accommodations, which actually varied widely in quality and interest. The book's hotel descriptions read like they were (and indeed in one case actually were, I heard) written by the hotel owners. This is not useful when attempting to distinguish between destinations as one plans a trip.

The book clearly is geared toward supporting the Dominican trail guide industry, suggesting guides for trails like the Middleham Falls (or even Trafalgar Falls) that most certainly do not need guides. (The only trail I found where a guide is helpful was the Boiling Lake trail- long, hard, and wet.) Information of interest to serious hikers was underdeveloped, as is the Dominican trail network itself.

Finally, the book's maps for the area I was in (Roseau Valley) were confusing. There were at least three maps for the region, which overlapped in inconsistent ways. I kept switching back and forth. The color map at the beginning of the book was attractive but nearly useless for navigation.

Here's a suggestion- the 1:50 000 Ordnance Survey map for Dominica is highly detailed and completely out of print. Why not adapt and update this map, and use it in the book? THAT would be a true service to travellers- and to Dominicans.