Lonely Planet Tanzania 4th Ed.: 4th Edition [Paperback]

The Lonely Planet produces excellent travel guides, and their Tanzania/Zanzibar edition is no exception. I have used this book on four different trips, and found it indispensible. The guide does an admirable job describing the popular tourist stops (the game parks, Zanzibar's Stone Town, etc.), but its real strength lies in giving the details necessary to take the roads less travelled.

I have found the hotel prices in the guide to be remarkably accurate, though naturally some things have changed. The "getting there and away" sections provide options for transportation to and from cities and towns; while the range of alternatives generally stays the same, departure times and prices can change drastically. Always plan on things taking longer than you expect.

Tanzania and Zanzibar are amazing places to visit, and the Lonely Planet will give you the means to make the most of your trip.

This is one of the worst editions of Lonely Planet books I've ever read.

The book is full of factual errors which probably is a result of poor research. I doubt that the researcher actually have been at some of the places, and that he has copied information from the Internet instead.

I traveled this summer in Tanzania, and ran into errors in this guidebook time and again. The Rough Guide was far more accurate, even though that book is two years older.

I can accept that phone numbers are wrong, given the constantly expansion and changes in the Tanzanian mobile phone system, but addresses should be right most of the time.

Further more, I can accept that travel times can't be relied upon as accurate in Africa, but if the journalist had actually travelled the distanses himself, he would have noticed things like:

Travel times for bus companies are given to the region, not necessarily the city it self. That can mean a lot of difference given that the regions are huge.

The slow ferry to Zanzibar does not take 3 hours as stated in the guide - however if you ask at the ticket office they will tell you that. The slow ferrys are all old freight boats with an extra deck, and they take between 6 till 8 hours on the entire journey.

Several restaurants in this edition do not exist, or haven't opened yet. Given the lack of information on the food and service I doubt that the journalist actually bothered to sit down to eat at the places mentioned in the book.

Shopping districts mentioned in the Dar es Salaam chapter does not contain the type of shops mentioned. For instance, there are virtually no curio or souvenir shops along the Samora avenue, even though the book claims there's a whole lot of them.

The research behind this book is just so bad that it can't be relied upon. Get the Rough Guide instead - it's much better!

Torstein

We are a couple of divers and we decided to go to Zanzibar for diving holidays. We took the book with us and the only thing we can say is - it's a bible for budget travelers. There are some excellent recommendations about the overnights and good restaurants. The prices in the book were fairly accurate. Important thing was that it gave us a good start in bargening. The only thing this book was lacking was some more info on island pemba.