Images of America Ridgewood Book

I first read this book in 2008 and re-read prior to a trip to Panama. I gave it two stars then and I might give it two and a half stars now but there are no half stars so I'll stand by my rating of two. This isn't for tourists. There are no reviews here. It's a road trip without a car, as the subtitle says, a travelogue of visits to the remote areas, quite remote in some cases, of Panama. Somehow its not engaging; although, you may pick up the odd fact such as cockroaches "have actually developed separate, simplified brains that control their hind legs" or that "a 1957 guidebook for Americans living in the Canal Zone neglected to mention that a province called Bocas del Toro even existed". But just when I want to call the writing pedestrian I stumble across a metaphor like"dreaming dogs sprawled themselves out in the afternoon sun like laundry blown off a clothesline." The best way to sum up this book is to say that it is like reading someone's diary, someone who writes facts and observations but not particularly his emotional connection to those aforesaid items.