The Mate experience

It was around 8:00 pm by the time we came out of the National Park office. We decided to try proper mate. Till now, we had always had mate in the form of tea and that had not impressed any of us. Now we wanted to try the real stuff. A day before we had seen a nice panadería (bakery) with some fabulous cakes and mate available for drinking, so we decided to go there and give it a try.
Now, none of us really knew how to order it or drink it so when the lady came to take our order, Hristo ordered a mate. Maria wanted to try mate as well, so she asked if she could share it with Hristo. The lady suggested that she'll get an extra thermos of hot water and they could have a common pot. Hristo wanted the whole pot for himself, so Maria ordered a separate one for herself and I too wanted to try it out, so I too ordered one. This, we later learnt was extremely stupid or more appropriately, ignorant of us. We ended up having 3 mate pots, with 3 pots of extra mate, 3 thermoses of hot water and 3 baskets of biscuits, along with the cakes we had ordered separately, on our table 🤤🤤
Then we tried to drink the mate like a herbal tea and how we liked the taste of it can be clearly seen in the pictures 😂😂😂 It was extremely bitter and with each sip, we could feel a kick straight to the head 😁😁
It was later during the evening when Maria was stirring her mate herbs in the pot and 2 local ladies sitting on the couch next to us noticed her and just couldn't stop themselves from coming over and explaining that this just wasn't the right way to drink mate 🤣🤣 They knew a bit of English and that's how we learnt the right way to drink mate 😉
So, here's how one drinks mate... Never ever stir the mate. That's a cardinal sin. Fill the pot 3/4 up with the mate herbs, then put 2 sips of hot water in. Wait a few seconds and drink the 2 sips. Then pass the communal pot and bombilla to the next person. They put another 2 sips, wait a while, sip the 2 sips and then pass it on. The biscuits in the basket are for the common consumption of everyone on the table. So, we should have ordered only 1 mate and a thermos each only 😁
After getting the technique right, the mate tasted much better and the caffeine kick was a bit more controlled. But, the quantity of mate we had ordered meant that we had a pretty high dose of caffeine overall and the aftereffects were pretty obvious quite late into the night 😂😂😂En savoir plus