Liza Prado

About the Author

Liza Prado was working as a corporate attorney when she took her love of travel and photography (and a leap of faith) to try travel journalism instead. Twenty years later, she has become an Americas expert, authoring almost 60 guidebooks plus countless articles and photographs to destinations in Latin America, the Caribbean, USA, and Canada.

Covering the Yucatán Peninsula was one of Liza’s first assignments and it remains one of her favorite places in the world. For this book, she dived through coral reefs and swam in crystalline cenotes, listened to howler monkeys and watched flamingos in flight; she also explored colonial cities and Maya ruins, ate countless salbutes and even walked in a two-mile-long Day of the Dead procession. A graduate of Brown University and Stanford Law School, Liza lives in Denver, Colorado with her frequent coauthor Gary Chandler and their children, Eva and Leo.

Gary Chandler grew up in a small ski town south of Lake Tahoe, California. He earned his bachelor's degree at UC Berkeley, including a year abroad in Mexico City and Oaxaca. After graduation, Gary backpacked through much of Mexico and Central America, and later Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean. His first guidebook assignment was covering the highlands of Guatemala, followed by assignments in El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere.

Gary has contributed to almost 40 guidebooks, many coauthored with wife and fellow travel writer/photographer Liza Prado. Between assignments, Gary earned a master's degree in journalism at Columbia University, worked as a news reporter and criminal investigator, and published numerous articles and blogs about travel in Latin America. He and Liza have two children and live in Colorado.