Customer Reviews

Adventure Guide, Panama (Adventure Guides Series)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What a wonderful surprise this guide book has been! My wife and I are off to Panama for a couple of weeks in 2005. We stumbled upon this book while searching for reference material for our trip. Patricia Katzman has a terrifically engaging writing style that makes one want to read the entire book, not just sections that one is traveling too. There are 73 pages of detailed introductory chapters, how to get there, what to expect. Then each province is discussed in details, including places not to miss, along with those narrow dark streets to avoid. There are 4 sections of full color photos depicting the fascinating people and stunning countryside of Panama. This is by far the most useful and well written guidebook I have ever read (and I have read many dozens).

I am the travel editor for a national travel magazine and have recently had the priviledge of using Patricia Katzmans excellent guide book to Panama. First, the cover is outstanding, one of the best I have seen. I loved all the pictures...they added so much. Second, the print is readable. Third, and most important, I found this guide to be extremely helpful to the average tourist planning a trip. The various areas and activities and the way to reach each destination were well researched. I consider many guide books to be useful only to those who know exactly where they are going (probably with a tour) and want to read about what they are going to see. Pat writes with a touch of humor and a sense of history that brough each area alive. I had the feeling she knew her subject well and I would be inclined to trust her judgement. Her chapter on the Darien, even included a few "reasons not to go" or at least, to not go alone. Great resource material. Mary Jo Plouf

Not wanting to burden ourselves we choose to bring just this guide book to Panama on our 2 week long vacation. It was published recently, in late 2004, so we felt it should be sufficient. We were wrong. While it is packed full of good information and recommendations, it also misses a lot of essential points. For instance, there are very few maps and the ones they did include, have hardly any street names or even neighborhood names that they are rendered utterly useless.

The Panama City map was especially frustrating and we were very fortunate to have picked up a tourist pamphlet that helped us figure out the city.

The Index is pretty awful. It appeared to have only the major items and didn't index many sights. You had to thumb through to the town or area and find it yourself.

A lot of the information in the book is already outdated. I think this is just a symptom of how quickly Panama is changing, but we found many hotels and restaurants to be shut down.

A final fustration is that sometimes places would be written in their Spanish name in the book and other times as their English translation.

I am the travel editor of a lifestyle magazine, and I used Hunter Travel Guides Adventure Guide Panama to plan a recent research trip. I was very impressed with the amount and detail of information the author offered. I looked at many other guides and none came close. I also carried the book with me in Panama and used it to make sightseeing and dining decisions while I was there. In my opinion, it's the best guide to Panama available, and I recommended it highly to my readers in the story which resulted from my trip.

"What a wonderful surprise this guide book has been! My wife and I are off to Panama for a couple of weeks in 2005. We stumbled upon this book while searching for reference material for our trip. Patricia Katzman has a terrifically engaging writing style that makes one want to read the entire book, not just sections that one is traveling too. There are 73 pages of detailed introductory chapters, how to get there, what to expect. Then each province is discussed in details, including places not to miss, along with those narrow dark streets to avoid. There are 4 sections of full color photos depicting the fascinating people and stunning countryside of Panama. This is by far the most useful and well written guidebook I have ever read (and I have read many dozens)." -- Captain Clam (Amazon customer)