In light of the recent news surrounding Thomas Kohnstamm, contributing author for Lonely Planet’s Colombia, and his fabrication of the guidebook, I decided to weed through the reviews on Amazon and see what people had to say. It wasn’t hard to find a bad one; out 16 total reviews, 14 were given only 1 star. Here are a handful of them:
“I have been a lonely planet guide book fan for many years. Unfortunately, this one is a big disappointment. I doubt the writer spent much time in the country. The info on Medellin is practically non existent. If they even bothered to read wikipedia, they could have provided 100x more info.” — San Diego Guy
“I started in Ipiales, worked my way up to Cartegena and back down to Bogota. There were the usually small errors, but by the time I reached Mompos, I wondered if the authors had visited Colombia recently.” — David Mellinger — Short answer: no!
“This guide does little more than repeat SOME of what the previous guide did. Most likely the writer just checked out phone numbers, maybe eliminated those that did not respond.” — Col
“Go to wikipedia online and you will find out a lot more than reading this book!” — Jack
I wonder if any of the contributing authors actually visited Colombia?
Thomas Kohnstamm wrote the History, Culture, Environment and Food & Drink chapters.