South America is not the first destination that comes to mind for British travelers. Last year, Britons made more visits to Canada than to all South American countries combined. Yet the continent is the subject of a venerable British travel book which celebrates its centenary this year – the oldest guidebook currently published in the English language.

THE South American Handbook was launched in 1924 and its next edition will appear next year. Among its users was the writer Graham Greene, for whom it was “the best travel guide in the world”. This is an incredibly comprehensive resource: the latest version is over 1,800 pages long. It has a reputation as a travel bible, a volume containing all the answers to life’s mysteries, such as where to find a decent meal in Cruzeiro do Sul, “an isolated Amazonian town of 10,000 inhabitants”, according to my 1990 edition.

I took the Manual with me on my travels across South America, from Venezuela to the Amazon, then through Brazil to Argentina, then back up via the Andes. I was 18 and on a gap year – otherwise known as “Gap yah”, in imitation of the feathery vowels of the young British private school graduate who ventures to faraway lands before going at university. (Guilty as charged!)

My Manual survived six months of heavy use. This is a battered but durable hardback book with a colorful illustration of a jaguar and macaw in the rainforest on the cover. In the thin white pages at the very back, I find a list of Argentinian wines written in my youthful handwriting, including one called “Terminator” accompanied by an exclamation point – obviously the relic of a vicious hangover . Two pages were torn out for unknown purposes. I don’t think it’s for the same reasons as a friend who, during his travels, turned the section on Paraguay into rolling paper for joints.

At the time of the first Manual appeared, there was no such thing as a backpacker with clotting tufts of dreadlocks dressed in native Andean clothing and a Buenos Aires beret (er, guilty as charged). The 1924 edition was aimed at commercial travelers at a time when Britain was one of the major trading nations with South America and Argentina had the largest population of British residents outside the empire or the United States. One of them was my grandfather, a three-year-old boy who lived in Buenos Aires when the first Manual appeared.

Its 660 pages contain advice on “the British status of children born in Argentina” like him. A glossary contains the Spanish words for hall porter (““The Guardian”) and invoice (“On the invoice“). Visitors to the Andes are advised that “it is the responsibility of the traveler to bring his own saddle and blankets.” Amid warnings about “primitive methods” of washing linen and the desirability of having “a good automatic electric lamp”, a reassuring note is sounded: “For formal occasions such toilets are suitable as those which ‘one would wear for similar meetings at home. »

The business traveler of the 1920s would have been offended by my 1990 trip. ManualThe warning not to have “a generally dirty and unkempt appearance” and for “users of drugs, even mild ones” to be “particularly careful”. It was written for a readership ranging from upscale types staying in five-star hotels to backpackers like me and my gap-year companion John, scouring its fine print for $1-a-night hostels.

Ben Box edited this edition. “It was intended to be the most comprehensive guide to Latin America for independent travelers and, to a lesser extent than before, for business visitors,” he tells me from his home in Suffolk. The 1990s Manual He was its first editor-in-chief, a role he held until his retirement at the age of 71 last year.

The editions were updated annually until 2018, with most information coming from readers. As Wisdomthe cricket bible, the South American Handbook gives the discreet impression of knowing everything about his subject. John and I were delighted when we managed to visit a town that had escaped his attention – a nondescript Brazilian municipality called Coronel Fabriciano, where we were introduced to people as “international men from the land of Paul McCartney”.

“The goal,” Box says of the Manual“was to give you everything you needed in a relatively manageable package.” Its commercial peak was in the early 1980s, when sales reached nearly 30,000 copies. “Then came the Falklands War,” says Box. The conflict between Britain and Argentina in 1982 caused a collapse in British visits to South America. “Sales fell in 1983, completely in freefall,” Box recalls. There had been a recovery by the time I went there, although the long-term sales graph was trending downward.

These days, the Manual must face an even more complete resource, the Internet. “The very nature of travel planning and travel itself has changed, fueling the long-predicted death of guides,” says Adrian Phillips. He is a travel writer and also managing director of Bradt Guides, which now publishes the South American Handbook. “The guidebook market has been in decline since the late 1990s or early 2000s,” he told me. “But it defied predictions that it would be extinct by then.”

Bradt took over the South American Handbook in 2019 when it purchased the book’s previous publisher, Footprint Travel Guides. “The timing wasn’t the best, because the pandemic hit,” says Phillips. “But one of the attractions for us was the fact that they had the opportunity to South American Handbookwhich has such weight in terms of the history of guides.

The 2025 edition should be published next summer. “It is a great honor to carry the torch as this legendary guide passes its 100th year,” said its new editor-in-chief, Daniel Austin. The updated version will feature nearly 9,000 hotels, restaurants, and other businesses, as well as countless churches, museums, national parks, and more. “One in five listed companies has closed its doors since the last edition, and undoubtedly many of them are victims of Covid,” explains Austin. “The new edition will therefore present more than 1,500 new hotels and restaurants across the continent. »

“It’s hard to know how it will sell,” says Phillips, Bradt’s chief executive. “We accept it because we have confidence in the story and the quality of the book. Obviously this will be the first edition that we will produce, so we don’t know yet what the sales potential will be and whether or not there will be an appetite from travelers to want this kind of comprehensive book. We’ll see.

Is it a pipe dream to imagine the Manual celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2074? “Oh crumbs,” Box said. “Well, it would be great to think that it could still continue at that point. Tourism is currently in a very confusing situation. But I still believe that the exchange of cultures and ideas through people meeting and talking to each other, seeing how others live and sharing their experiences with them, is as important as anything you can do.

His words echo the quote from the Elizabethan philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon printed on the title page of the copy I carried in my backpack to South America. “Travel, among the youngest, is part of education,” says Bacon; “in the eldest, a share of experience.” I’ll raise a glass to that – but not of the Terminator variety. How long South American Handbook and his philosophy endures.