Is this where we turn off for Agua Azul?
Travel guide books are good to have, and I have many. Still, they do have their faults. This was written after an intense, 2,000 mile, 2 week trip through the Mexican part of the Ruta Maya. (Pictured are the waterfalls at Agua Azul, Chiapas.) Photography by Diana Ricci
Unless you have a big fat research grant, or you are rich beyond comparison, your travel destination has one characteristic in common with everyone else's: somebody, somewhere, has written a travel guide about it. The more common the destination, the more books. For Mexico travelers, a small library of guides exists, offering the nervous tourist endless opportunities for confusion and frustration.
Stop on any street corner in Mexico for long enough, and eventually a tourist will come shuffling up, squint at the walls for street signs, turn this way and that for orientation, and consult his/her guidebook in an often vain effort to locate him/her self. Note which guidebook the person possesses. It provides a clue to their income level, and why they are there. Is it well-worn or new? Is it this year's edition? Much about us is revealed by our guidebooks.
The most important thing to know about Mexico travel guides is that they leave out far more than they include. If they didn't, you'd need a two-ton truck just to carry them. This is true even for "regional" guides: there are several available just for the "Ruta Maya" (the area where the Maya civilization waxed and waned), which includes only the Mexican states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Yucatan and Quintana Roo, and parts of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador. Mexico provides such a vastness and richness that no one guidebook can encompass all of it.
Because no one of them can tell you everything, they each have a unique editorial policy. For instance, one guide will concentrate on cheap: where you can get a decent room, meal, etc., for as little money as possible; whereas another opus sets a dollar-amount per day and then looks for those places that will allow you to stick to that budget (and does anyone else remember when the daily dollar amount was $5?). Some offer lots of maps. Others feature lots of full color photos of sites and attractions. A travel club book will concentrate on routing and RV spots, as well as full-service hotels. Anyway, you get the idea: everyone has a different idea of what YOU need to know.
Sometimes they contradict each other. A hotel which is praised by one will be panned by another; a restaurant which one puts in the "moderate" category will appear in the "luxury" group of another; a beach which is breathlessly praised by one will be flatly warned against by another. Sometimes they contradict themselves: a new edition will pan a hotel that the old edition praised; a road that looks incomplete on a map will be described as finished in the text, or vice-versa. In the end, the only way to be sure is to check it out "on the ground", not always easy for the eager tourist overburdened by luggage and overexercised by heat, humidity and altitude. My favorite guidebook contradiction is the two cenotes (say-NO-tay: a large natural pool, usually "bottomless", sometimes inside caves, and often with a history of native religious significance) called "Cenote Azul" (the blue cenote), located on different sides of the city of Tulum, on the coast of Quintana Roo. Every guidebook has one or the other included; none that I have read features both.
Even the maps suffer from some of these problems. For example, there are a series of ruins west of Chetumal in the Yucatan which are listed in most guidebooks as the Rio Bec ruins. Of these, the one that is most developed is called Kohunlich. However, you will not find it in the AA map of Mexico (an otherwise fine and detailed map book), even though the other Rio Bec sites are listed.
So here is my advice to you: if you want a totally predictable, flawlessly correct travel experience, go to the library, read every book about the area, and then stay home. Travel, as well as being broadening (not to mention fattening: I always come back from a trip with extra weight to shed), is unpredictable. Guidebooks are just that: general indicators of how and where to go. Use them, but don't let them run your trip. They are, after all, written, edited and published by humans: always a tricky business...
If you have comments or suggestions for Stan, you can contact him at:
http://www.realoaxaca.com/email-realoaxaca.html
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