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 Location:  Home » Mexico Travel » General AAS » San Sombrero: A Land of Carnivals, Cocktails and Coups (Jetlag Travel Guide)December 1, 2008  


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San Sombrero: A Land of Carnivals, Cocktails and Coups (Jetlag Travel Guide)
San Sombrero: A Land of Carnivals, Cocktails and Coups (Jetlag Travel Guide)
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Authors: Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Rob Sitch
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Category: Book

List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $1.96
You Save: $11.99 (86%)
Buy New/Used from $1.47

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars(7 reviews)
Sales Rank: 36327

Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 204
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 4.8 x 0.8

ISBN: 0811856194
Dewey Decimal Number: 917
EAN: 9780811856195
ASIN: 0811856194

Publication Date: September 28, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Riding on the heels of the hilarious send-ups Molvania: A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry and Phaic Tan: Sunstroke on a Shoestring, comes San Sombrero. The people of San Sombrero are an outgoing, talkative, and sociable bunch, which perhaps explains why so few have succeeded as spies. Laughing comes naturally to them, and it's not unusual to see large groups of people doubled over with laughter, even in court or during a funeral. Often described as "the Venice of Central America" (due to the fact that many of its coastal cities are sinking), the sun-baked island of San Sombrero offers something for everyone, be they music lover, eco-tourist, history buff, or UN Human Rights Commissioner. From the frenetic nightlife of its capital Cucaracha City to the guaranteed solitude of a west coast beach during sea-snake season, there's simply so much to see and do in this undiscovered tropical jewel.


Customer Reviews:   Read 2 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars Another great book in the series   August 28, 2007
  1 out of 1 found this review helpful

While not quite as good as the first book on Molvania, San Sombrero is still a fun book and well worth the time to read it. It makes you even want to read the restaurant and hotel information for the twist they manage to work into them. Vive San Sombrero! Vive (insert name here), el Presidente!


4 out of 5 stars Viva San Sombrero   August 26, 2007
Very funny, as are the orher two titles in this series. Amazon should offer a package collecting all three- "Molvania", Phaic Tan" and "San Sombrero". There are several other titles mentioned in these books as future publications in the Jetlag Travel Series. I'll buy them when available. I'm particularly looking forward to "Travel for Seniors" with information on the twenty best places in the world to lodge a complaint.Iwant to know if Rick Steves' many books on European travel inspired the authors of the Jetlag Series to parody them. Please comment, Santo Cilauro.


5 out of 5 stars be warned   February 27, 2007
  8 out of 8 found this review helpful

Look, we don't know each other. I may be an inveterate exaggerator, right? I might give all fives on my Amazon reviews. I might detest conflict and only say nice things about books.

You don't know, do you?

So let me assure you that none of those things is true, because I'm going to make a statement that might seem ludicrous: SAN SOMBRERO is one of the funniest things I've ever read. My wife thinks so, too, and we don't agree on very much. Even my Rhodesian Ridgeback seems particularly jaunty when I'm reading SAN SOMBRERO.

An Aussie friend introduced me to the Jet Lag travel guide spoofs. SAN SOMBRERO is actually the third in a series but the first I've read. It doesn't matter where you begin, but - if you have ever read a serious travel guide of any kind (say, Frommers, Rough Guide, etc.) - then you'll *love* what these lunatics do with the genre.

SAN SOMBRERO is roughly based on Costa Rica, Cuba, and any number of other Latin American 'travel paradise' locations. Each time you think the authors have exhausted their uproarious takes on one of the conventional aspects of the genre, you turn a page and they hit you again.

It's inexhaustibly entertaining, right up to the 'insert' at the back of the book.

I can't wait to read PHAIC TAN and MOLVANIA.

Aussies, all is forgiven, even your abysmal cricket side and the freakin' long airplane rides it takes to get where you are. You can come home now and rejoin the family of nations.



4 out of 5 stars Just as funny as the first two.   January 4, 2007
  2 out of 3 found this review helpful

I own the first two in this series (Molvania, A Land Untouched By Modern Dentistry, and Phaic Than, Sunstroke on a Shoestring). I bought this hoping it was half as funny, because they were hilarious. Imagine my pleasure to find that the third installment was new, fresh, and still very funny. I love to read these while I am travelling.



5 out of 5 stars brilliant parody of Latin America travel guides   December 29, 2006
  2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I don't go out of my way looking for comedy, but I found this in my parents' collection during a visit back home. Probably the more familiar you are with Latin America travel guides, the more you'll appreciate this book, which exaggerates the dangers of travel (disease, political unrest, insects, street food), and desperate living conditions, etc. as much as the guide books tend to downplay these conditions. This book is funny to me because rather than being absurd, it is loosely based on the (sometimes frightening) truth. The book is well-designed and illustrated- if you just looked at the pictures, you wouldn't know it wasn't a real guide book. Following are some excerpts (which are by no means highlights, as the humor is relentless):

"Be very suspicious about taking a ride in a cab where a 'friend' is accompanying the driver. San Sombreran taxi drivers don't have friends."

"San Sombrerans are passionate movie-goers, possibly because cinemas are the only air-condition buildings in town."

"Political instability has seen 17 different presidents take power in the past decade, the shortest reign being that of Alivio Escrevez who was assassinated halfways through his own inauguration speech."



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