When I travelled around Europe, I found the Europe on a shoestring guide to be really helpful, so when I decided to visit South America I immediately bought this book to help me with my planning.

I bought the 11th edition, published March 2010 and really liked the colour section at the start, including a map of the continent and a series of photos of 'South America Highlights' which made me want to go everywhere! The next section contains some suggested itineraries which are really helpful in planning a trip and getting a feel for how far you might be able to get in a certain time frame.

The book is split into sections, covering a country per section. At the start of each country there's a short overview covering things such as the language spoken, a rough idea of the exchange rate (obviously these are always changing!) and an estimate of the budget you should have per day while in the country. There's then some information about the country including a bit of history, which I found to be very interesting. There's also sections about the culture, religion and the environment so you get a good feel about the country as a whole.

Each country has loads of information about cities to visit and the main sights and attractions. There's loads of city maps as well as maps of the country or region to help see where places are in comparison to each other (which is really useful when planning where to go next). The section I found to be most useful was called "getting there and away" at the end of each city which had details of where the bus station/airport etc are and the number of hours the bus would take. The only problem was, that between the book being researched and the time I was travelling, it seems that the bus prices in Argentina had gone up considerably, so I'd advise using those prices with caution!

There are loads of recommendations of places to stay, although I generally use internet sites to research this so can't really comment on how good these recommendations are, although they do give prices here so it's helps get a rough idea of prices for accommodation. The recommendations for places to eat in the guide were really good and I ate a lot of tasty food by following a few of the recommendations.

It's a definite must for anyone planning a big trip to South America. It's packed full of so much useful information and helped me so much with deciding on where to go.