Insight Guides Guatemala, Belize and The Yucatán Paperback – December 1, 2012

All good, great travel companion!

Good book for planning our trip

We were on a trip to the area and had seen others with the book so we knew what we were getting. It was an excellent resource for us to review the trip and learn some details that we had missed. I would recommend it to any one traveling in that area.

This is from 2012, but is similar to one I had and gave away. Glad to have it since some things never change. Was in good condition.

I'll know more after the trip. The read at this point is great. The Insight Guides are great for travel and to sit on the coffee table!

Will be traveling to Guatemala and this book gives a lot of information relevant to my trip. Covers the best sites to see and more!

It's a great book, but not to take with you on your trip. It's very heavy and big. Otherwise, it's a ok.

Good reading but lacks more practical information to get to the places

Guatemala Belize and the YucatanThere are many different guide books available – all covering the basics of What to see , Where to stay /eat/drink/be amused and, something of the history of the countries/cities/areas of the and fauna/flora. Travel essentials and local customs are also covered. Which book you select (and we have tried most of the available guides – all of which had something to offer) comes down to what you want, how recent was the guide updated, and sometimes the price. We tend to visit far off lands from cruises or from land tours where the accommodation is pre booked. What we mainly look for is a guide of what to see/do/special requirements, some history and particularly any information on flora and fauna. We like pictures, maps and diagrams and when we were travelling by cruise ship to the Yucatan , Belize and Guatemala in 2016 we used a S/H 2013 Insight guide which matched our tour in its treatment and content and proved invaluable.This book covers an area which is mainly the historical ( and current) heartland of the Maya peoples. We were interested in the history , the peoples , the food , the sights , rather than up to date information on accommodation.This book ( some 400 pages) starts with the history of the area , the peoples , the food , the culture and the sights before covering in detail the countries of Guatemala, Belize and the Yucatan peninsular of Mexico ( ca 240 pages) . This still gives a great overview of the countries and their historical Mayan heritage .Key cities , areas and historical monuments are covered . Being S/H ( 2013) the detail of accommodation ( which has several pages) may be out of date.Still – for us we would rate it as 5 stars and a latest edition would be worth investigating if latest accommodation details are required ( The Internet remains the key to the ultimate up to date information)

This guide covers what historically would have been the lands of the Maya. We have previously explored Mayan Mexico extensively but this time wanted information primarily on Belize and Guatemala. We used the guide for pre-trip planning, more around the sights, historical context, etc than anything else so that we could do more research online once our appetite had been whetted. Much as the Insight Guides are well put together with great photography, they are pretty hefty, particularly as we were travelling elsewhere in Latin America as well, so we didn't take the guide with us on our travels. Like all guide books which are heavy on colour photography, it also acts as a memento of the places we visited.

This is the worst indexed book I have seen in a long time. The kindest thing I can think of is that the index matches an earlier edition but wasn’t updated along with the text.The book content isn’t too bad - assuming you can find what you are looking for despite this index. I haven’t tried the online information yet. Hopefully it will be more easily traced.

I think this guide book is great! Although, I only used it for planning my trip to Guatemala and Belize, the overall information is useful and it offers good advise and tips on places to visit and things to do. I can highly recommend this guide book.

Excellent guide for the sites although unlike some guides not much information on places to stay/eat but you can find all that out on the internet before you go so we didn't find it a problem.