I do not have a publisher yet. I’m hoping to be done with traveling by December and will then have time to concentrate on finding a publisher and ironing out the rest of the details. My goal is to have the book available for purchase by next year.

Nos hablamos pronto!
Natalia

As is obvious by the responses to your post so far there is a wide spectrum of guidebook useage – some people use them as a starting point and others almost as an instruction manual. Paraguay is a country with a lot of potential, very little tourism infrastructure and, either a bad or non-existent reputation, depending on who you talk to. I wonder who I have to write for and who other guidebooks write for. An experience traveler? A backpacker? A business man? Someone with no experience in Latin America? Sometimes the experience of writing a guidebook can be even more interesting than the subject of the book!

Regarding print vs. virtual guidebooks I have heard people say they would never use a guide in e-book forms and others say “I can´t wait till I can carry all my guidebooks on my iphone!” Each has it´s pros and cons. Books are heavy. A virtual guidebook can be updated more easily but I would imagine that whipping out your iphone might be an issue if you are touring an underdeveloped area of the world. In terms of the process of writing a guidebook I decided to stick with old school tools – pen and paper – instead of a digital recorder for conversations. Paraguay is very poor and pulling out a fancy device can break the level of intimacy during an interview or friendly conversation.

For someone with a one-month Interrail ticket for Europe, who wants to see as many of the continent’s sights as possible before returning home, and who wants to do it on the cheap and meet other travellers in the process, a guidebook is pretty indispensable. This kind of travel is for fun, visiting specific locations for specific reasons.

This is no more or less worthy than its antithesis, which I should say is what I’m doing at the moment. I’ve sacrificed stability and (on some levels) social acceptability for the freedom of unrestricted travel. I do it by travelling on a bicycle and camping out every night. In two years I’ve never carried a guidebook, and I long ago gave up on carrying maps.

Why? Well, it just fits. Since travel is my way of life, rather than being a time-out from my ‘real’ life, things are going to be different. I relish the tingle of crossing a border and arriving in a new country with my mind a completely blank slate. It sounds ironic, but not having a map has increased my ability to navigate, and not having a guidebook has taught me how to find what I need. Above all, it means that my experience is untarnished by any preconceptions.

If I couldn’t develop like this, I doubt I’d have the motivation to keep doing it. A guidebook and map would take away the lure of the unknown and the lessons of the getting-to-know.

When I meet short-term travellers, they usually arrive already knowing where they want to go and what they want to do. The locals know this as well, and they take full advantage of it. Every hotel owner knows when he’s listed in Lonely Planet. I guess this is more of an issue when we’re talking about somewhere less-visited, like Sudan or Yemen or Armenia. It serves both parties well in this situation.

Incidentally, the other reason I don’t use guidebooks is because there it is only rarely that I find myself somewhere that it would be useful. I don’t stay in hotels or take much interest in sightseeing, so a guidebook which fills me in on the details of two towns 50km apart but doesn’t mention anything about the villages or the road between them – which is where I’m going to be for 99% of my time – is of limited use.

All of that said, it’s just been my personal preference, and one I continually question but have ended up sticking to for the reasons above. Next year I’m planning to spend all spring and summer exploring Central Asia by bike with my wife, and since we’re going to take it more slowly, take more time out for exploring and visiting places in more detail, and occasionally stay in the odd hotel, I expect a guidebook will come in handy. I’m not a guidebook-resister – they are indispensably useful to many travellers – but they’re not for everyone.

I think the danger comes when they are relied on too heavily (your ATM story maybe!). Change happens. Some trips can become little more than the ticking-off of to-do lists. I think (hope) this is a minority. I encourage people to take risks and to test themselves against the unknown – in moderation at first – because there are some really valuable lessons to be learnt by simply not knowing where you’re going – especially alone.

But it’s not just that reason that I always carry one – it’s great to get a relatively concise overview of an area in one relatively easy to carry book.

It’s great for planning a rough itinerary (which you can change if something better comes along) and getting an idea or two of places you might enjoy drinking or eating in. You don’t have to follow it to the letter, or at all if you don’t want to. I consider them as being a bit like Wikipedia – an excellent first reference point that should never be taken as gospel.

The internet’s great, but as someone else pointed out it’s so much fun just sitting with a proper book and flicking through it, marking things in pen, folding the corners over (I *never* do this with other books) and making the damn thing look *used*.

Sure, they’re out of date at times. I tend to use mine more for “what to see and do” than “where to eat and sleep”. Travel advice in some countries rarely changes, but in others it’s a very fluid beast – you have to take train schedules, bus times and the like with a pinch of salt.

It’s a *guide* book after all – it guides you in the right direction. It doesn’t necessarily get you there in one piece and do your laundry for you on the second day. If you want that kind of treatment, go on a package tour.

They’re also a great souvenir. A friend of mine has a Lonely Planet from almost every country he’s been to. He’ll buy them locally, if possible, use the hell out of them and then post them home once they’re taking up too much space. I’ve started doing that, but I still only have about a dozen of them.

I’m slightly biased, though. Besides being an internet addict I’m a huge lover of books and I don’t believe you can beat the “feel” of sitting and flipping through a proper paper tome.