A travel writer on a not so lonely planet

The image of the conscientious travel writer has been dealt a blow by a tell-all memoir by a Lonely Planet author, who discloses that he spent more time chasing women and selling drugs than checking train timetables.

Modern guide books like to portray themselves as the definitive source of information on how holidaymakers can enjoy themselves in far-flung corners of the globe without damaging the environment or upsetting local people.

But in a warts-and-all account of how he came to write Lonely Planet's guide to Brazil, the American writer Thomas Kohnstamm has revealed a world where good reviews may be exchanged for sex or a free room for the night, and decisions on which restaurants to include are dependent on the whims of a hard-up author without time to check the details.



In Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?, Mr Kohnstamm, 32, discloses that there was nothing lonely about his three years travelling through Latin America, working on a dozen different titles.

"The waitress suggests that I come back after she closes down the restaurant, around midnight," he writes. "We end up having sex in a chair and then on one of the tables in the back corner. That performance earned a guidebook entry describing the restaurant as "a pleasant surprise" where "the table service is friendly". He also recounts how he shared his apartment with a Brazilian prostitute called Inara. Short of cash, he admitted selling ecstasy to pay his way.

Mr Kohnstamm was the principle writer on the Lonely Planet guide to Brazil and was a coordinating author on the Lonely Planet titles on Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, the Caribbean and Latin America.