Your Lonely Planet Chile Travel Guide Book is a Fake!

All of them are fake. Even the originals. It's all made up! Lonely Planet Brazil, Colombia, South America, the Caribbean and Venezuela. And tons more, too!

Do the right thing, pile all your copies of Lonely Planet in the center of the room, douse them in kerosene and light the match. If you don't have any Lonely Planets to burn, you can buy one here.

Who's the shadowy figure behind the lies? None other than the Unabomber of the travel publishing industry, Thomas Kohnstamm.

Oh. My. God. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Yes, his initials are T.K. - just like Ted Kaczynski!!!

And just like Ted Kaczynski, our T.K. sent neatly packaged bombs to his editors. And by "bombs" I mean fake travel reviews!

T.K. recently told Australian media that he'd plagiarized a bunch of stuff, then he retracted, but still, in his new tell-all biography he gloats about conjuring up the entire nation of Colombia:

"They didn't pay me enough to go to Colombia. I wrote the book in San Francisco," he says in the book. "I got the information from a chick I was dating -- an intern at the Colombian consulate."

Listen, guys! He's telling us that Lonely Planet doesn't pay shit and we should be outraged at the poor working conditions of our fearless freedom fighter.

But to be fair, my hat's off to Random House for identifying a cheap date.

I mean, for all his punk rock Seattle grunger 20-something slacker chic, T.K. is actually 32, and the Unabomber, and look if you pay him next to nothing (but more than Lonely Planet did) the little bugger will hussle, he'll work the press and help broadside the reputation of the world's biggest travel writing brand to generate pre-order buzz. Not a bad deal! And look I am falling for it I'm just a pawn in his twisted plot:

On April 22, 2008 T.K.'s new book Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? is on the shelves, click here to pre-order your very own copy from Amazon.com today!!!

It promises to be a rollicking - I'm sorry, "Swashbuckling" - Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism.

Alternate title:

Sadly, No. Travel Writers Don't Go to Hell, Because Hell Doesn't Exist - But Yes, Poor Rich White Kids can Sleep with Brazilian Whores for Free, and then Make Money Writing About It.

Five in the sky, bra.

I'm not gonna ask for a complimentary copy, as I know he's on a budget 'n all.

Someone who I assume is definitely not getting comped is Wayne Bernhardson. You may remember Wayne from such titles as Lonely Planet Chile, Moon Handbooks on Argentina, Buenos Aires (plus coastal Uruguay), Chile (plus Easter Island), and Patagonia (plus the Falkland/Malvinas Islands).

You may also remember Wayne from such travel blogs as his blog about travel in South America called Southern Cone Travel, a supplement to Moon guide books.

Wayne's blog blows all other Chile blogs to pieces. In-depth, up-to-date and expert (25 years covering the region), of course. But what I really like about it is the textured insight he brings to each entry, debunking the Buenos Aires is Like Paris cliché as not only passé, but patronizing, and distilling esoteric economic headlines - that the Chilean Central Bank is buying billions of dollars to devalue its own currency and boost exports - into practical advice for travelers: Chile travel is going to be cheaper next summer.

Wholly hokey was his dubbing Chilean metal heads "copperheads", but if you read the post it all ties together because, no surprise here, Wayne is a real writer. (That makes three of us, in the anglophonic Chile blogosphere).

Best yet, Wayne actually does visit Chile and I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt because I met him at the Santiago Times! He was mooching internet and bitching about his car. I'm sure he doesn't remember meeting me, but it's okay we've become friends again, I commented on his Buenos Aires post and helped coax out the true meaning of the post: how the World Bank's GINI coefficient applies to Chilean nanas.

So if there were a Hell, I wouldn't wish it on Wayne. But I can't wait to see what he writes about his colleague Thomas Kohnstamm.