Ecuador Guide Book
 

Any suggestions for a good guidebook for Ecuador. We are not going to the Galápagos Islands. Thanks

I got most of the guidebooks from the library, read all about the areas that we were visiting, and then used Fodors and Tripadvisor for most of the information that I needed. A lot of guidebooks are out of date, so you'd be better off using the web. That's my opinion anyway.

Happy planning! That's always one of my favourite parts of the trip.

Thanks -- I always use the internet for planning, but still like to have a guidebook even though hotels & restaurants are out of date, it still has the info on the sites and history which doesnt change.

I bought an old Ecuador Footprint on ebay. IMO their single country guides are the best series for South America. Avoid Lonely Planet. But you may want to have a look at Rough Guide (if crellston endorses it).

I found the internet to be widely available in Ecuador. For hotels I used booking.com a few times to arrange the first night in a new city but at least once I found rooms not as advertised, so I moved along after looking a bit more on Tripadvisor and my guidebook. You can also wander and look at out rooms, hotels will definitely negotiate if you are not visiting during a busy time.

Info about the Quito airport will be the biggest gap in most guidebooks. The hotel I used in Puembo was a booking.com discovery, but the are now on the beaten path and more costly.

Outside of Quito online mapping (Google Maps) is lacking so I definitely endorse the use of a paper book with decent sketch maps for the outlying locations.

I have a trip report although most of it is a list of birds seen so you may only wish to read the first few entries!
http://www.fodors.com/community/sout...-galapagos.cfm

I plan to go back next year and actually do Galapagos, which I thought I would never do. Plus another few weeks in Ecuador since I never really made it to the southern parts beyond Latacunga.

I used Rough Guides for Ecuador and found it very comprehensive. Particularly good were the"getting to and from" sections.

Thanks for the info.