Canter Bridge

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

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.