Mexico

Blue Guide Mexico does a wonderful job of filling a gap in the Mexican travel guide market. Far and away this is the best guide book in English for discovering the art, architecture, and history of Mexico. It is obvious after reading this guide book how culturally deficient and shallow the Lonely Planet and Rough Guides are (not just for Mexico but in general). I do have one complaint. This book is huge. There are over 100 pages written on Mexico City alone. When is a traveller to have time to read and digest this information? Not on the road, that is for sure! So I have not quite figured out how best to use the information contained herein. Should I read it all before I travel? I am likely to forget half of it by the time I go. Do I read it after the trip? That will just frustrate me and remind me of all the things I should've seen but didn't know to look for. So that is the puzzle of this otherwise rich tome. (One last warning: fortunately this book does not waste space or your money listing hotels and restaurants for every major city in Mexico. Who needs that anyway? But if you are the kind of person who thinks that is what a guide book is for, maybe you should just get a different guide book... or better yet, get a copy of the yellow pages when your plane lands.)

The Blue Guide is not meant to be practical - the entry for Mexico City says "there are many hotels in Mexico City." However, the depth and amount of information about history, art, architecture, and culture are astounding. We used this book on a driving trip through Mexico City - Queretaro - Guanajuato - Taxco - Acapulco - Cuernavaca, plus a side trip to Merida - Chichen Itza - Uxmal. The guide pointed us to numerous fascinating sites that were not mentioned in our other guidebooks. Some examples: An 80+ page section on the National Museum in Mexico City takes you through piece-by-piece, adding much to the placards in the museum and also pointing out exhibits that are not to be missed. The sections on Chichen Itza, Uxmal, and Xochicalco were all fantastic. My personal favorites were the guides to the work of the Mexican muralists Rivera/Orozco/Siqueiros. Want to know where all their works are and what was significant about each one? it's all in this book. If you're the kind of traveler who wants to know everything about the places you visit, this book is a must-have companion. And the best part about having a guide book that doesn't preoccupy itself with hotels and restaurants is that this book will never go out of date...

Unlike most travel guides, this does not tell you where to eat or stay. Instead, it offers detailed information on the archaeology and hostory of numerous archaeological sites, colonial architecture and more. It includes site plans for many sites and step-by-step information on museum exhibits. It also explains the archaeological excavations that have been done at various sites. I recommend it highly to anyone traveling to Mexico to view archaeologial and historical sites.