Even through Barro Colorado Island is only about 25 miles from Panama City, it feels like it's much farther away. This is because Barro Colorado Island is very remote; getting back to the mainland takes at least half an hour by boat. After that, buses don't come through Gamboa (the town where the boat docks) very often, so you either have to wait a couple of hours for the bus or get lucky enough to have a taxi drive by. The taxi ride still takes another 40 minutes, because there's heavy traffic on the way into the city.
To get to Panama, I traveled 1,800 miles by air. That took about eight and a half hours over the course of two flights! The 70-minute trip to the city doesn't seem like such a hassle by comparison.
During the daytime, my friends and I mostly walked around the scenic areas of Panama City. Once it got dark, however, we didn't want to get lost, so we took taxi cabs to get from place to place.
