What are the written Colombia travel guidebooks available and what's the best one? Here's some reviews of various options. See also the page about books to inspire travel to Colombia.
The Best Guidebook, but it's in Spanish
The best, and most up to date guidebook is called Guias de Rutas Turisticas de Colombia. It's updated annually, is all in Spanish, has excellent maps and destination guides and can be picked up from most bookshops and also various supermarkets and highway tolls.
Footprint
The footprint guidebooks are invariably excellent, with accurate, well researched travel information and easy to read lay out. Better still is that Footprint has recently relased a 2009 edition of the Colombia guide - this is one of the best all round English language Colombia guidebook. 7 out of 10 from me.
Bradt
Bradt is a good alternative guidebook series and has released a 2008 edition of their Colombia guide. Reading it in 2010, I found much of the information to be a little out of date and the information that is present isn't particularly comprehensive. Having said so, those with their own vehicle will find this a useful additional book as there's useful advice about pit stops, road trips and drives and the book has a slight focus on self-drive travel advice. 5 out of 10 from me.
Viva Travel Guides
Researched by travellers for travellers - the Viva guidebook is comprehensive and generally accurate. 2009 edition is now available. I haven't read this one.
Lonely Planet
Colombia's Lonely Planet 2009 edition is a vast improvement on the previous edition, which was utterly hopeless. Useful info indeed - only now can I recommend this LP. In my opinion, the LP is, surprisingly, the best of the lot - 8 out of 10 from me.
Other popular travel guidebook series such as Rough Guides, Frommers and Fodors do not currently have a Colombia edition. No doubt that will be changing very soon.
