Talking with Moon Handbook author Wayne Bernhardson

This month in the RolfPotts.com Travel Writers section, I interview guidebook author and southern South America expert Wayne Bernhardson. This interview is worth reading for Bernhardson’s travel literature recommendations alone, but he also sheds a lot of light on the challenges of being a guidebook writer. “Physical fatigue can be an issue for a guidebook writer,” he says. “In my recent five-month research trip to Argentina, for instance, I never spent more than four consecutive days in the same location. This can obviously be stressful, and of course guidebook writing means that sometimes you have to visit places you don't particularly care for and can't stay as long in some places that you really like. Because guidebooks have to be comprehensive, you can't pick and choose as much as you might like."

Nevertheless, Bernhardson has no desire to delve into new areas at this point in his career, claiming that much of the joy in his work comes from “the pleasure of revisiting places and peoples I have gotten to know over the years, and [being] able to appreciate the changes that have taken place. I no longer enjoy vagabonding as I did when I was younger, and have little desire to visit completely new places or even to travel without working, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Given the choice, I prefer to spend another week to broaden my knowledge of the Atacama desert, for example, than to travel to the unknown (for me) Gobi.”

Berhardson recently wrote Moon Handbooks to Guatemala and Chile, and his new Buenos Aires Handbook comes out this month.