I happen to love Frommer's guides and will defend them to the end. However...I was quite frankly disappointed in this book. There are several reasons why:

1) This was the first time I purchased the Kindle/eBook version and I just didn't think it made the cut. If you have an option I say go for the paperback. I found it a little more difficult to navigate through the electronic version than a traditional book. With the physical books, I can thumb through different chapters and jump back and forth at will while titles and names jump out at me. The electronic version isn't quite so simple to read randomly and I almost felt as though I had to read this cover-to-cover. Anyone who travels and uses a guidebook knows that it is not always practical to read in order.

2) This book excluded quite a few places to stay and eat. I know that for a fact because I traveled to Peru as part of a group trip and all of those details were determined for me. Prior to leaving I tried to do my diligence but quickly gave up as just about nothing was listed. If you're traveling with a group it doesn't matter where your guidebook recommends because you have no say whatsoever in where you stay or eat. Yes, I will admit that there were a few hotels and restaurants to which I would never return. However, there were a few rare gems I enjoyed that weren't mentioned at all.

3) I thought this book was better used for facts about activities. If you want to learn a little bit about several ruins and points of interest, this book will be of help. It's sad but I found better use of this guide AFTER I returned than I did prior to my trip. To be fair, that could just be attributed to the fact that there was now a sense of familiarity.

4) I'm a little hesitant about some of the advice, most specifically the act of haggling. This Frommer's guide author suggested that haggling was almost the Peruvian national sport. To be fair, my group tour manager told us the same thing. HOWEVER...in certain parts of Peru that truly was not the case and sometimes you can almost feel like a bully.

The bottom line is - get this book only if you're part of a preplanned group trip and simply would like to do some reading on the activities you will try. It certainly isn't of much use for planning hotels and restaurants. On my flight into Lima I saw quite a few people reading the Lonely Planet series on Peru. I can't vouch for the Lonely Planet brand, but considering so many people were reading it I wouldn't doubt it's more informative than Frommer's. It hurts my heart to say that because I generally love Frommer's guides, I just wasn't impressed with their book on Peru.

We have travelled extensively, but mostly in Europe, but this was our first time to South America. We have used every major brand of travel book, we don't necessarily stick to Frommer's. However, we have used Frommer's on other trips and it worked out fine. However, this particular travel book was REALLY AWFUL. We planned our trip based on the information in the book, and once we got here, we wished we had planned differently. This is something that has NEVER happened to us before. The book did not provide good information on the sights at each locality, and important and basic information that we had to figure out on our own was missing. And I mean REALLY BASIC information that I would never have expected to be missing from a travel guide.

Things that were missing were fundamental information like how long a tour at a specific location takes. Machu Picchu itself we budgeted an entire day. Turns out that tours with a guide takes about 2 hours, and then maybe a couple more to re-explore on our own. Things like Ollantytambo is really a one day town unless you are doing excursions. No info like that. Things like how long it takes to get around the Sacred Valley via bus or taxi (only provided basics like you can do it). Things like it is OK to take taxis in Lima if you call ahead - not the doom and gloom that the book makes it out to be. That Aquas Caliente has reasonable places to eat, not just pizza places.

Maybe this book was written in general terms, but it sure didn't seem to us that the writers did these trips themselves, instead relying on information they might get from other sources.

Nearly everything was 50% more expensive than they said. We went to three different restaurants recommended by this book only to find they weren't there any more (and didn't look like they had been for some time). One of them was in a terrible neighborhood where our taxi driver was really nervous.

The book's poorly organized and the information's spotty (for example, they tell you that fourteen sites around Cuzco are covered by a combined tourist ticket, and that some *require* the combined ticket, but don't tell which ones).

We traveled in Lima, Arequipa, Puno, Lake Titicaca, and The Sacred Valley. We had the book on Kindle. You can't zoom in on the maps; not sure if that's a limitation of the Kindle (we can zoom text on it) or the book, but we couldn't really read the maps that way. Thankfully we got mobile Internet at the airport for my wife's phone (as recommended by this book, which was a very good tip) so we were able to use the Internet and Google Maps to get around and find things.