Trip from Bocas to Panama City

Sometimes you just need a little vacation. Even if you live on a boat in paradise ! For us these "mini vacations" mean something has broken and we need to travel to either repair or replace it. It is fascinating to me that usually these repair or replace businesses for boat products are never actually near water ! Oh well. Bocas is about a twelve hour boat/land trip from Panama City or a one hour plane ride.
The first option was $6 water taxi and $28 bus ride. Left the marina at 430 pm and arrived in the city at 530 am. We too the night bus thinking we could just sleep for the journey but that was not to happen. They woke us up at three different times and MADE us get off the bus to have a break. Once you re-entered after breaks people invariably showed up with smelly food and little children were no longer happily sleeping.
We decided to fly home. This was $100 and very pleasant. Kudos to Air Panama they were on time and super friendly.
In the city we used a great man, Roger, to drive us around to where we needed to go.
The city was very crowded and traffic was terrible.
The Albrook Mall was awesome. They boast over 700 stores and the prices were fantastic.
Never believe online hotel pictures. We paid a little extra to stay at what we thought was a nice hotel with a pool, Spa and Casino. The pool was up five flights of the building next door, not actually in the building with the rooms. It was dirty, deserted and cold. The Spa was indefinitely closed up. And the anticipated and advertised poker room in the casino was also closed. Oh well.