[.ca] Diving & Snorkeling Hawaii: Top Dives in Oahu, the Big ... (ISBN 1864500905)

This is not a "real" Lonely Planet Guide...:
I have used many Lonely Planet Guides to travel from Asia to Middle East to Africa, and they have all been great plan-it/do-it-yourself guides. This one isn't one of them. It gives no real info at all on the actual location of a site, except to show a little icon on a small scale map. It says little about shore entry, and little about where to go after entering the water. It barely says anything useful for snorkeling. It's no more useful than a coffee table book when it comes to helping one plan a trip. It's a nice visual production, but it's a guidbook series acquired by Lonely Planet and not a "real" LP Guide.

Snorkeling like the locals:
I am usually not a Lonely Planet guide fan - I like more pictures. So this book was a pleasant surprise from them. Lots of vivid pictures. Fantastic advice about what types of things NOT to touch too!! Kept us out of trouble more than once. They listed several of the sites that the local dive shops mentioned as well. You have to know they are good that way! Nice to have a guide for which are shore access and which require a boat trip too. We went to every single shoreline access site listed for the Big Island and they were correct with their descriptions. Our trip wouldn't have been half as wonderful without this book! Thank you Astrid and Casey!

Little value to divers or snorkelers:
I'm very dissapointed in this book. I'm an experienced West Coast diver who has dove in Hawaii several times. I bought the book hoping to find detailed information on some great sites. What I got instead was a general overview without any real substance. Yes, there are some good facts throughout the text that are helpful, weather, climate conditions, etc., but very little on where and how to dive the individual sites. The sites for each island listed are only a few, and in my experience aren't the best ones. Specific details are left up to the diver or snorkeler to figure out. Something difficult for a first timer to the islands. The maps were too few, too basic, too broad, and lacked sufficient detail to really have this book be considered a "guide book." I would suggest anyone travelling over to Hawaii to pick up a copy of "The O`ahu Snorkelers and Shore Divers Guide" by Francisco B. de Carvalho. His book has more detailed info than any other book on the market and will definitely give you what you need to know on selecting and diving or snorkeling a site...all 26 for just the island of O`ahu.

Hawaii dive guide:
I used this book a lot on my recent trip to Maui and thought it was great. It's not like the general Lonely Planet guidebooks, but it's not trying to be - it's got lots more photos (awesome!) and and the focus really is on the dive site descriptions. There's plenty of snorkeling information, including a "Top 10 snorkeling sites". And did I mention the photos?