While walking around looking for ATMs the night before we came across what looked like a nice bakery, so in the morning we walked back over for some breakfast. As we entered, the sweet smell of fresh bread perked us up and made us excited to see what they had. We stood there for a few minutes, confused by all the empty containers where we would typically see bagels. Soon a man came out from the back and greeted us in English. As it turns out Ernando had just opened La Tescana Panderia three days earlier, so he hadn’t fully stocked his inventory yet. He let us try one of the items that we thought was a bagel, which turned out to be a semi-sweet bread with cheese melted inside. It was incredible! After getting settled with a coffee and a couple of breads, he came back out to chat.

It turns out that Ernando lived in Chatanooga for six years, and worked at Panera, and apparently he had taken notes. It sounded like he had dreamed of opening a Panderia back in Colombia, so he saved all his money and practiced the art of bread making, and then came back to Colombia to open the very store we were sitting in. He was going to focus on Italian breads, but also offer traditional Colombian breads. Everything we tried was perfectly baked, and incredibly flavorful. After finishing up he pointed us in the direction of some computer stores, where we spent the rest of the morning trying to replace a failed external hard drive for our photos and video.

We were on our way by mid morning, and the driving the rest of the day consisted of more incredible valleys and steep winding roads. About an hour before dark, we were still high in the mountains, so we started to look for a place to stay. We came upon a restaurant that had a large open air patio with about thirty tables and noticed that they had a large flat area behind the restaurant, a high value item for us at the moment! After a brief conversation with the owners, we were backing in and popping the top for the night. Later we learned that the family receives about ten buses a day that stop at their restaurant high on the mountain pass, to use the restroom and get a hot meal. The large stoves in the back were always cooking something!
After parking the entire staff and all the kids started coming over to the van to see what the crazy gringos were driving. As usual, everyone was amazed that this little van had a couple of beds and full cooking facilities. We spent the rest of the evening with the family in their restaurant, showing the kids pictures of places we had been, letting them play on our computers, and just generally enjoying the warm hospitality.