Mate is Argentina’s afternoon drink of choice. It’s kind of like tea, but you fill the special cup 3/4 full of herbs, then stick in a straw with a filter at the bottom so you can drink it.
It tastes like a cup of sweet clover steeped in warm, slightly diluted bile. I would ingest something like it again only if a pleasant hallucinatory experience were to follow.
Mighty Girl 
Ahh, I’ve had mate before. The first few sips are the worst, supposedly. Also if you stir it, that makes it worse. But then it tastes kinda nice. A fun drink but too much risk involved for my tastes.
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Wow, that’s a powerful endorsement…
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I know I hate it, I refuse to share the straw, but believe it or not the act of drinking that is really popular here, you are not cool if you don’t drink mates with friends here in Argentina, just the culture. If someone offers you some and you say no they look at you weird.
Anyway what usually works for me it’s sugar, lot’s of it, use more sugar than yerba.
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Really, Maggie? Cause you looked like you were enjoying it. Sounds, uh, delicious.
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sounds like my first, and last, experience with bubble tea. call me a reactionary, but i just feel a mite conservative about drinking anything with tapioca chunks floating in it.
as for Maté – i’m afraid of anything that requires special equipment to partake of it. sounds a little too much like breaking out the works for a tasty round of speedballin’.
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That “special cup” looks like it should have a Tiki God carved into it.
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We had to try that stuff in Spanish class and I was really gung ho about it until it touched my tongue. I think I just about threw up in my mouth, but I didn’t want to offend the girl that had brought it so I was all, “Oh my god, mmm, delicious.”
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what? really? No pleasant hallucinatory experience followed? I thought that was the whole point.
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Maté …weird stuff, I know. And the whole sharing it…ack. I remember being on a beach in Florianopolis, south Brazil, that is most popular with the Argentinians. It was boiling hot and they (the Argies) were all drinking Maté. Extraordinary!
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Two of our staff, one from Chile, the other from Paraguay, imbibe it at work, complete with paraphalia. They have offered it to me but I refuse to share the same straw. Now I know I made the right decision.
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Hey, you guys, that really is my Aunt Yolanda in the post above. Hi, Auntie! The things you learn when you turn on the comments.
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