Central America

Lonely Planet: On a Shoestring

by Tom Brosnahan, Carolyn Hubbard, Barbara Reioux

This guide covers travel in Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. It is designed for travellers on all budgets and includes 127 updated maps, a Spanish language section and details of transportation options.

Genres: Travel

818 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

In 1968, Tom Brosnahan wrote the first budget guidebook to Turkey as a Peace Corps project. Instead of completing work on a Ph.D. in History, he turned to travel writing and authored dozens of best-selling guidebooks for Frommer's, Lonely Planet and Berlitz. In 2000 he described it all in his humorous travel memoir, "Turkey: Bright Sun, Strong Tea" (2005).

In 2000 he transitioned to the Web, where his websites guided millions of travelers from 230+ countries.

In 2016, standing in Istanbul's Sultan Ahmet Square, he remembered how it looked in 1968 during the hippy era. Characters appeared in his imagination, he wrote down their antics, and within a week he had 30,000 words of a humorous novel: "Istanbul Love Bus" (2018).

"Paris Girls Secret Society" (2017) was to be a sequel, but new characters appeared instead. Some of the Istanbul characters reappear on a Greek island in "Alexandros - the island" (2024). Fascinated by the similarities between today's world and the Gilded Age, he wrote "Serene - a novel of the Belle Époque" (2022).

Another humorous travel memoir centered on food is in the works (2025), as is another novel.

Reviews

[Trudy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smaller sized guidebook that fits nicely into a large purse and not too heavy for a backpack. The gray tabs make easy and quick access for quick reference to the different regions. Maps are easy to read.