Gary Chandler grew up in a small ski town near Lake Tahoe, CA. As a student at UC Berkeley, Gary spent a year abroad in Mexico City and Oaxaca. He returned after graduation, backpacking through much of Mexico and Central America. He got his first guidebook job shortly thereafter covering Guatemala, followed by assignments in El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, and elsewhere. Between assignments Gary earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, worked as a newspaper and radio reporter in Buffalo and San Francisco, and married fellow author, Liza Prado. Gary has worked on fifteen guidebooks in all, and has published various online articles, mostly on travel in Mexico and Latin America.

Liza Prado was working as a corporate attorney in San Francisco when she decided to take a leap of faith and try travel writing and photography. Seven years later, she has coauthored eleven guidebooks and written various feature stories and travel blogs to destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean; her photographs have been published in Moon Handbooks and Lonely Planet guides, and on travel websites like Home&Abroad and Away.com. A graduate of Brown University and Stanford Law School, Liza has traveled extensively throughout the Americas and Europe. She speaks Spanish fluently, Italian and French decently, and can order a catfish dinner in Portuguese. She currently lives in Denver, CO with her husband and frequent coauthor, Gary Chandler, and their daughter, Eva Quetzal.