LAURENCE MACKINreviews Travel: Where to Go Whenand Lonely Planet's Chile & Easter Island
Travel: Where to Go When
Edited by Craig Doyle
DK, £19.99
This is an explosively colourful collection of pages, with destinations organised on a month-by-month basis and an emphasis on the spectacular. As such, it is terrific for generating ideas and letting the imagination run riot.
In April, Italy’s Ligurian Coast looks very tempting, but Samarkand beats it for exoticism. In July, when most head for the packaged beach enclaves, the charm of untamed Cape Cod and Norwegian Arctic Circle explorations sound much more tempting and far from obvious choices.
The prose is lean and succinct, with little room for frothy descriptions; most of the space has been given over to lush photographs that tumble from the pages.
This is a slickly packaged, handsome book that could throw up a destination you had never even considered and, with luck, lead to the trip of a lifetime.
Chile & Easter Island
Lonely Planet, £15.99
Chile looms large on the pages above, and rightly so: it is still enough off the beaten trail to make you feel like a proper traveller rather than a tourist. This guide goes with the typical divisions of northern, central and southern Chile and Santiago, as well as a concise chapter on Easter Island. (Most holidaymakers on a typical two-week break would be advised to pick one or two areas at the most.) This book tries to pack it all in, and it is largely on the money; it’s perhaps a little in love with Valparaíso, but is sharp to Vina del Mar’s tacky charms, for example, and it has included several beautiful coastal towns that other guides have omitted. The coverage of Patagonia is also suitably detailed, although this outstanding area perhaps deserves a guidebook to itself.