Travel Guides and Apps

Today I would like to recommend a few travel aids. They are based on my own experience. As a curious person I did not only look at the travel guides available in the accommodations, but also at those of other travellers. Of course with inquiries 😉

Travel Guides

Depending on how you travel, you should get a travel guide. I recommend the two German publishers Stefan Loose and Michael Müller Verlag. Whereby the Michael Müller Verlag unfortunately only covers Ecuador in this case. Stefan Loose covers Brazil, Chile, Peru and Western Bolivia. The Rother Wanderführer für Patagonia is worthwhile, not only for trekking fans. Hiking guides have also been published for Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. For French Guyane I advise to buy a French guide, they are the most detailed. If you can’t find one, you can get one in Cayenne at Carrefour. The same tip is probably also valid for Suriname and Dutch, as long as one speaks the language. Those who are very good in French can also buy the famous Le Routard, these are at least as detailed as the Stefan Loose books. The English Rough Guide is also recommendable. They cover Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Their guide to South America is also good as well as the Footprint travel guide for South America. Putting money into the Lonely Planet South America for little money is definitely better invested in other equipment. The book doesn’t do much except enumerate the highlights. Most of the information is not correct and you get very little background information compared to other books. Wikitravel offers about as much, sometimes even more information than Lonely Planet.

Recommended Apps

For the journey to South America I recommend these following apps. They have helped me best in the area of food. All apps except HappyCow are open source, which I generally prefer. They are available on F-Droid (F). But I have marked if they are also available on PlayStore (G) and AppleStore (A). They have all been tested by me in South America.

Daily Dozen (F) (G) (A)

The app for Dr. Greger’s daily dozen can also be used as a shopping list when changing over. It is definitely recommended for those who change their diet while travelling. But just as general if you want to track your diet.

Food Restrictions (F) (G)1

A digital pointing board that also displays whole sentences in English and Portuguese. More languages will be added once they are translated on Crowdin. Unfortunately, the showcase does not contain all products relevant for vegans and is generally very inaccurate.

HappyCow (G) (A)

The portal for vegan, vegetarian and vegan-friendly restaurants worldwide. Works perfectly in South America, sometimes some restaurants are not findable or no longer exist. Please report immediately. The full version helps by its memory functions, because then you can walk around without internet. This app has already saved me from “starving” a few times and has surprised me with delicious food several times.

Openfoodfacts (F) (G) (A)2

By scanning the barcode, this app displays the ingredients. However, it only works if the product is registered on Openfoodfacts.org, which is unfortunately rarely the case with South American products. Crowdbased open source version of other food scanning apps.

QuickDic (F) (G)3

Offline Dictionaire of my choice. You can download the languages you are currently using. Everything needs very little space and is of course open source.

OpenVegeMap (F) (G)4

This is a world map with vegan, vegetarian and vegan-friendly restaurants. Unfortunately the map only works really well with internet access and there are not as many restaurants listed as on HappyCow, because the data is loaded from Openstreetmap. On the other hand this has the disadvantage that the data is not necessarily up to date. But it is an OpenSource alternative to HappyCow.

E Numbers (F)5

A simple register to look up the E numbers, which also indicates whether the substances are suitable for “vegetarians” and whether one should rather avoid the substances for health reasons. This app is open source, but there are other similar apps6 that work in exactly the same way and are not open source.

Cows Revenge (F) (G) (Linux, Windows, Mac)7

This retro-look platformer game is about a mutant cow that takes revenge on factory farming, liberates chickens and kills butchers. Good to relieve your frustration 😉

 

1https://gitlab.com/tmendes/FoodRestrictions

2https://github.com/openfoodfacts/OpenFoodFacts-androidApp

3https://github.com/rdoeffinger/Dictionary

4https://github.com/Rudloff/openvegemap-cordova

5https://bitbucket.org/uaraven/enumbers/src/default/

6Beispielsweise: https://enumbersapp.com/de/1

7https://pipoypipagames.itch.io/cows-revenge

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