What Colombia's Like...Or Not

Mon14Apr2008

What Colombia's Like...Or Not

14:29 H | Topics: Bizarro - Books - Brazil - Colombia - Controversia

Next time you're about to take a trip, you might want to think twice before you pick up a Lonely Planet guidebook. Apparently at least one guidebook author thought it was OK to write about countries he'd never visited, among them Colombia:

A former Lonely Planet travel writer who provoked controversy after he admitted he did not always visit the places he reviewed today played down the "hyperbole" surrounding his revelations.

Thomas Kohnstamm's book Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? contains tales of living with a prostitute, dealing drugs and in one case, writing about Colombia, without actually visiting the country.

"They didn't pay me enough to go to Colombia," he told Australia's Sunday Herald Sun newspaper.

"I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating who was in an intern in the Colombian consulate."

Kohnstamm told the paper he had worked on more than a dozen books for Lonely Planet, including their titles on Brazil, Colombia, the Caribbean, South America, Venezuela and Chile.

The author claims that as a writer, it just isn't possible to visit all the places you are asked to write about because you aren't paid enough. Lonely Planet is denying that similar white lies are being told in any of their other guidebooks.

Via / Guardian

Colombia Rocked by 5.6 Earthquake (Monday, May 26 2008)
Latino Book Month Thursday, May 8th Pick : Borderlands:la Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua (Thursday, May 08 2008)

Jennifer

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1. kelly ~ Monday, Apr 14 2008 | 16:36H:

That is so funny that you blogged this because I was just reading the Lonely Planet book on Panama. It is very strange to read the books because while at first it seems as if they have a lot of information,they really just have a lot of words! I am trying to find new places to explore in Panama when I go in July and have found that it is easier to look up that info online than in a book. I don't know how the other books are but the info you mentioned in your post seems to hold true for the book I read.

2. Jennifer Woodard Maderazo ~ Wednesday, Apr 16 2008 | 14:01H:

I totally agree. And I don't know how many times I've read through a guidebook on a city I know and thought to myself "WTF are they talking about?" I guess I know why now.

I think this is kind of sad because I really love travel writing and had a naive view of it before I heard about this scandal.

3. daryl ~ Monday, Aug 18 2008 | 15:31H:

It's so like an cocation american to put another country or nother race down.They dont want the truth to be told,they dont want other country's to prosper from Americans. It's all about ways to discurage others from going to other country's any thing for the truth not to be told. About the wonderful things other country's have to offer.

VivirLatino