Koncocoo

Best South American Travel

Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time
While history has recast Bingham as a villain who stole both priceless artifacts and credit for finding the great archeological site, Mark Adams set out to retrace the explorer’s perilous path in search of the truth—except he’d written about adventure far more than he’d actually lived it. “[An] engaging and sometimes hilarious book.”— The New York Times Book Review “A serious (and seriously funny) travelogue, a smart and tightly written history, and an investigative report into perhaps the greatest archaeological discovery in the last century.”—NationalGeographic.com. “An engaging, informative guide to all things Inca.”— Entertainment Weekly.
Reviews
"If you are only going to read one book about Machu Picchu before you visit this should be that book."
"Mark Adams' account of his adventure has something for everyone...the middle aged male who shucks the cubicle for adventure, the adventurer who wants an authentic account of exploring the still remote corners of the globe and most...those who have long thought of making the trek to Peru and Machu Picchu."
"I now know going anywhere other than from Cusco to Machu Picchu requires preparedness and awareness to keep from getting into trouble with vicious plants and stupid mistakes that can wreck things in a hurry."
"Having been to Machu Picchu 32 years ago I thoroughly enjoyed reading Mark's account of his travels there."
"If you are a true adventurer, then this is the book for you!"
"I wish that this book had been available before I went to Lima, Cusco and Machu Picchu and other parts of Peru in September and October of 1987."
"Part travelogue, part personal narrative, part history lesson, it read like a novel and I enjoyed the author's humor and turn of phrase."
"I ordered this book on a whim 3 days before a trip to Peru, figuring I ought to learn as much as possible during my short travel opportunity."
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Lonely Planet Peru (Travel Guide)
Color maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - history, cuisine, music, the arts, nature Over 70 color maps Covers Lima, Amazon Basin, Huaras, Cordilleras, Central Highlands, Chan Chan, Cuzco & the Sacred Valley, Lake Titicaca, Arequipa, Canyon Country and more. Downloadable PDF and offline maps prevent roaming and data charges Effortlessly navigate and jump between maps and reviews Add notes to personalize your guidebook experience Seamlessly flip between pages Bookmarks and speedy search capabilities get you to key pages in a flash Embedded links to recommendations' websites Zoom-in maps and images Inbuilt dictionary for quick referencing. Source: Nielsen BookScan.
Reviews
"I never leave home without my Lonely Planet guide!"
"The kindle version is great!"
"I usually love Lonely Planet, but in Peru, I really relied more on TripAdvisor."
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Lonely Planet Colombia (Travel Guide)
Inside Lonely Planet Colombia Travel Guide: Color maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips save you time and money and help you get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - including hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, and prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer and more rewarding travel experience - including customs, culture, history, art, literature, music, sports, politics, landscapes, and wildlife Over 50 local maps Covers of Bogota, Zona Cafetera, Cartagena, Medellin, El Cocuy, San Agustin, Mompox, San Andres, Providencia, Cali, the Amazon Basin, the Pacific Coast, the Caribbean Coast, Boyaca, Santander, and more. Downloadable PDF and offline maps prevent roaming and data charges Effortlessly navigate and jump between maps and reviews Add notes to personalize your guidebook experience Seamlessly flip between pages Bookmarks and speedy search capabilities get you to key pages in a flash Embedded links to recommendations' websites Zoom-in maps and images Inbuilt dictionary for quick referencing.
Reviews
"I think next time I order a travel guide, I will get hard copy rather than the Kindle version."
"It's as good quality as any other Lonely Planet guides I used."
"I really enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone wanting insight into Colombia!"
"It's ok...the guide does not offer options for "best path" between the attractions and some suggestions seemed paid by suppliers."
"It recommends restaurants that are closed (such as Crepe Express in Cartagena), and deems Cartagena's Inquisition Museum as a "must see", but when we went we found it had NO artifacts, MANY empty rooms, a few posters with weak historical facts and a fake guillotine, and was hardly worth the time."
"I bought this book, which is my third Lonely Planet Colombia travel guide hoping to see an improvement over previous editions but this poor attempt demonstrates that Lonely Planet can’t get Colombia right and the company can’t publish a good travel guide about Colombia after three attempts. I was hoping for an improvement over the previous Lonely Planet guidebooks about Colombia that were pretty poor and this latest guidebook is no improvement and in fact is worse in many ways with much information that is out-of-date considering this book was published in September 2015. The exchange rate table used in this new Colombia guidebook is the exact same as was in Lonely Planet’s previous Colombia guidebook I have that was published in August 2012. It’s the same in other cities; many of the best restaurants are missing and any newer restaurants that opened in Colombia over the past few years are completely missing from the book."
"Information not thorough enough."
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Best Argentina Travel

Lonely Planet Argentina (Travel Guide)
Full-colour maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - daily life, music, literature, cinema, outdoor activities, environment, cuisine Free, convenient pull-out Buenos Aires map (included in print version), plus over 80 colour maps Covers Buenos Aires, Bariloche, the Lake District, Cordoba, the Central Sierras, Iguazu Falls, Mendoza, the Central Andes, The Pampas, Patagonia, Salta, Tierra del Fuego and more. Downloadable PDF and offline maps prevent roaming and data charges Effortlessly navigate and jump between maps and reviews Add notes to personalise your guidebook experience Seamlessly flip between pages Bookmarks and speedy search capabilities get you to key pages in a flash Embedded links to recommendations' websites Zoom-in maps and images Inbuilt dictionary for quick referencing. *Source: Nielsen BookScan.
Reviews
"Needs more info for back packers/car campers like super market locations."
"A solid guide."
"Was waiting for it to be published."
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Best Brazil Travel

The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes
In this gripping first-person account of adventure and survival, author Scott Wallace chronicles an expedition into the Amazon’s uncharted depths, discovering the rainforest’s secrets while moving ever closer to a possible encounter with one such tribe—the mysterious flecheiros, or “People of the Arrow,” seldom-glimpsed warriors known to repulse all intruders with showers of deadly arrows. Along the way, Wallace uncovers clues as to who the Arrow People might be, how they have managed to endure as one of the last unconquered tribes, and why so much about them must remain shrouded in mystery if they are to survive. On the one hand, The Unconquered is the account of a nightmarish three-month expedition into the Amazon jungle in 2002 led by the irascible Brazilian wilderness explorer Sydney Possuelo, a legendary defender of the region's last uncontacted Indians. Rife through with moments of danger, loneliness, and hunger, as well as the testosterone-fuelled dramas that seem peculiar to groups of men undergoing hard times together, The Unconquered makes a spellbinding tale of real-life high-adventure. In this book, Wallace, who renders memorable portraits of his fellow expeditionaries (the cook, Mauro, haunted by nightmares about monkeys who castrate him; Soldado the backwoods scout, who refuses to return home and see his aging mother) is also brutally honest about himself. Some years before Wallace met him, Possuelo, Brazil's best-known sertanista , or "agent of contact" with the Amazon's isolated indigenous people, had undergone a crisis of conscience about the destruction wrought by his life's work. As Possuelo explained it to Wallace, he wished to gather vital information about the flecheiros and to ascertain their wellbeing, but could only do so by penetrating their sanctuary on foot and by dugout canoe with a band of armed men, while at the same time seeking to avoid contact with them. During the journey itself, the inescapable Catch-22 of Possuelo's logic became more and more apparent until the moment, retold dramatically by Wallace, when the expeditionaries blundered inevitably through a flecheiro settlement, spreading panic as they went. An editor from National Geographic asked journalist Scott Wallace to join an expedition into the deepest wilds of the Amazon jungle to find the mysterious ‘People of the Arrow.'. While the experience was pretty much a nightmare, it’s a blessing for readers of Wallace's fascinating book.” — Associated Press “Echoing Amazonia’s earliest European explorers, Wallace crafts a tale that is part gripping adventure story, part window into the unexpected complexities of a developing country where uncontacted tribes stand between a resource-hungry economy and an area abounding in natural wealth.” – Indian Country Today “Rife with poachers, drug smugglers, illegal gold miners and violent tribes already acquainted with the dangers of modern life…Wallace describes the trek in vivid, if unsettling, terms.” – Maclean’s “Wallace joins the tribe of jungle-besotted literary types led by Redmond O'Hanlon and David Grann and presents a credibly incredible tale about his voyage past the edge of modernity.” – Huffington Post "A gripping tale of adventure." “While it’s hard to imagine that ‘stone-age’ tribes still persist in a world of cell phones, satellites and social media, it’s even harder to understand how difficult it is to police these isolated regions, to keep them free of outsiders who could endanger a way of life that has nearly disappeared…Wallace’s narrative is apt and penetrating.” – SEJournal.
Reviews
"Contrary to what you might expect, the goal of the mission wasn't to actually contact the tribes; rather, the expedition sought to identify where the tribes lived so that the Brazilian government could later track the the tribe's movements and population by air. Interspersed throughout the jungle tale is a history of the white man's contact with indigenous Amazonian tribes, a history of the department of Isolated Indians, and a history of the evolving theories on how to approach indigenous tribes. Where previously the government sought to "tame" wild Indians, the policy is now to avoid contact, since contact with the white man inevitably brings about loss of native culture and crippling epidemics of disease."
"I learned so much, saw the interesting landscape and culture through his eyes, and now feel like Sydney Possuelo and I are old friends. This is truly a must-read for all of us armchair adventurers who would not be able to endure snakes that jump out of trees, biting ants or not being able to take a hot shower for all that time."
"Some people make tremendous sacrifices for others, such as myself, to read of the primitive conditions and arduous conditions to hike into the heart of the Amazon to find undiscovered tribes."
"Possuelo's mission is to successfully cordon off civilization, preventing modern society from reaching "uncontacted" tribes living in the Amazon forest. Think about that for a minute or two: his mission is to prevent modernity from reaching people who are living behind a veil of ignorance, in what can only be described as a primitive state. The argument for protecting them is that contact with modernity (characterized by greed where the white man is the devil) introduces disease, makes the indios bravos dependent on modern contrivances, causes them to turn their backs on ancestral ways and leaves them in a state of poverty. Set aside the disease problem (it is a problem, but it's incidental, solvable with enough effort) and look at the often tragic history of these contacted tribes: they become dependent on modern contrivances, they leave their traditional ways and they are ill-adapted to succeeding in the modern world, leaving them poverty-stricken."
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Best Chile & Easter Island Travel

A Companion To Easter Island (Guide To Rapa Nui)
The essential guidebook to this mysterious and enigmatic island, and the only book about Easter Island written by someone who lives there. He now runs his own private touring company, Easter Island Spirit, and is also the British Honorary Consul on the island.
Reviews
"If you are only going to be on the island for a few days (I arrived on a Friday and left on a Monday), then I highly suggest going around on your own and using this book to plan your itinerary as I did; there was nothing advertised on any of the tours that wasn't discussed in this book and you don't lose much if anything on island culture and history by forgoing guides."
"This is the best resource I found for background and navigational tips for visiting Easter Island."
"Wonderful book for self-guided tours."
"Enormously helpful for our two weeks exploring the island."
"Great details, history, and local color."
"A must have guide to read before visiting Easter Island and to have on hand while visiting."
"easy to read ( I read it in the plane From Santiago to Easter Island)."
"Just back from Easter Island."
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Best Ecuador & Galapagos Islands Travel

Lonely Planet Ecuador & the Galapagos Islands (Travel Guide)
Full-color maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - including customs, history, music, politics, landscapes, and wildlife Over 61 local maps Covers Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca, Otavalo, Banos, Montanita, Vilcabamba, Mindo, Canoa, Isla de la Plata, the Quilatoa Loop, Papallacta, Isla Santa Cruz, Isla San Salvador, and more. Downloadable PDF and offline maps prevent roaming and data charges Effortlessly navigate and jump between maps and reviews Add notes to personalize your guidebook experience Seamlessly flip between pages Bookmarks and speedy search capabilities get you to key pages in a flash Embedded links to recommendations' websites Zoom-in maps and images Inbuilt dictionary for quick referencing. Looking for more extensive coverage?
Reviews
"The Lonely Planet Guide is superior to other guide books..it always has some hints on less travelled or frequented spots as well as the traditional highlights."
"Book has been worth EVERY penny, have gotten many ideas for our trip from it."
"Easy to read, excellent index and great maps."
"This book is awesome!"
"Thorough and helpful with lots of side notes of interesting aspects of the land and culture to be aware of."
"The pictures and descriptions in the book were clear and detailed and made us excited about this trip."
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Best Peru Travel

Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time
While history has recast Bingham as a villain who stole both priceless artifacts and credit for finding the great archeological site, Mark Adams set out to retrace the explorer’s perilous path in search of the truth—except he’d written about adventure far more than he’d actually lived it. “[An] engaging and sometimes hilarious book.”— The New York Times Book Review “A serious (and seriously funny) travelogue, a smart and tightly written history, and an investigative report into perhaps the greatest archaeological discovery in the last century.”—NationalGeographic.com. “An engaging, informative guide to all things Inca.”— Entertainment Weekly.
Reviews
"For his first endeavor, he chooses to follow in the footsteps of Hiram Bingham, the American explorer often credited with the discovery of Peru’s “lost city” of Machu Picchu. Interspersed with information about Incan history and Bingham’s expeditions, Adams relates his experiences trekking through the remote regions of Peru with his tough-as-nails Australian guide John Leivers."
"Adams alternates among his present-day experience, Bingham's experience, and the thoughts on the Incas (the builders) in the 1400-1500 times frame to attempt to explain the original purpose of Machu Pichu."
"If you like reading adventure travel stories, are attracted to South American (and Inca) history, and want to be entertained while you are being educated, you will probably enjoy this book."
"This book is a lot more than about Machu Picchu."
"I now know going anywhere other than from Cusco to Machu Picchu requires preparedness and awareness to keep from getting into trouble with vicious plants and stupid mistakes that can wreck things in a hurry."
"Mark Adams' account of his adventure has something for everyone...the middle aged male who shucks the cubicle for adventure, the adventurer who wants an authentic account of exploring the still remote corners of the globe and most...those who have long thought of making the trek to Peru and Machu Picchu."
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Best Central American Travel

Lonely Planet Central America on a shoestring (Travel Guide)
Color maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Budget-oriented recommendations with honest reviews - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - history, music, cuisine, sports, wildlife, environment, architecture, literature, cinema, current events Over 90 maps Covers Mexico's Yucatán & Chiapas, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and more. Downloadable PDF and offline maps prevent roaming and data charges Effortlessly navigate and jump between maps and reviews Add notes to personalise your guidebook experience Seamlessly flip between pages Bookmarks and speedy search capabilities get you to key pages in a flash Embedded links to recommendations' websites Zoom-in maps and images Inbuilt dictionary for quick referencing. Source: Nielsen BookScan.
Reviews
"Call me crazy...but I feel like a book with "on a shoestring" in the title should really spend more time reviewing budget accommodations and skip the expensive hotels."
"Great book with tons of great information."
"Came sooner than expected and the book is great."
"Those who like to include off-the-beaten path travel, should consult Lonely Planet’s individual country books for gems that are even better than the easily-gotten-to sites."
"Really a god guide!"
"There should be separate (thin) books for each Central American country to spare single-country visitors from lugging such a thick volume; the country-specific e-chapters are a poor alternative due to careless layout and, in El Salvador, spotty Internet access."
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Best Mexican Travel

Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Spanish Grammar, Premium Third Edition
This new edition includes: Time-saving vocabulary panels that eliminate having to look words up Advice on how to avoid common mistakes A detailed answer key for quick, easy progress checks Supporting audio recordings, flashcards, and auto-fill glossary available online and via app. Gilda Nissenberg Ph.D. , is an experienced educator and faculty trainer.
Reviews
"Complete Spanish Grammar is another book in the Practice Makes Perfect series which happens to be a real bargain for the price. For example: - Irregular verbs. - Stem changing verbs. - Ser and estar. - Determining when to use the preterit tense vs. the imperfect tense. - The future and the conditional. - The progressive tenses. - The present perfect and the past perfect. - The future perfect and the conditional perfect. - The passive voice and passive constructions. - Not just the present subjunctive but also the imperfect and the pluperfect subjunctive. - Commands. - Nouns and articles. - Adjectives, adverbs, pronouns and prepositions. - And a lot more. One features that I found helpful about this book is that the author includes verb charts that you can quickly use as a reference. But the two things that I like most about this book are: One, the author gives plenty of advice on how to avoid many of the common mistakes that native English speakers make when speaking Spanish. You can conveniently take it anywhere with you when vacationing in a Spanish speaking country in order to have more than 700 phrases in your Spanish-vocabulary arsenal. The program is geared toward the foreign-language learner who wants to eventually achieve fluency in Spanish instead of someone who just wants to learn a few travel phrases. Compared to the other programs that I have used, this one does the best job at teaching you how to develop an authentic sounding Latin American Spanish accent."
"The author easily explains the rudiments of grammar--starting with verb tenses-- while offering many challenging exercises with answer keys in the back."
"Great resource for helping with learning or researching self Spanish."
"Very good book, very helpful."
"I have been teaching high school Spanish for 29 years and these workbooks are great supplements to my textbook!"
"For one thing, she uses vocabulary in the exercises that are nowhere in the book - not in the glossary, not in any of the other exercises, nor in any of the vocabulary boxes that appear on some pages."
"Just in chapter 1, the verbs shown in tables come up so small and faint they are illegible without blowing the font sky-high and rotating the text each time you want to look at one, so easy back reference isn't possible."
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