Paraguay

I just have to write a little bit more about the Yerba Mate culture here. It is just amazing. Everywhere you go you see people carrying thermoses with cold water and filling up their cups every once in a while.

Well I described the "ritual" in an earlier post, but I haven't mentioned yet that they also blend all kinds of herbs with the mate. The paraguayans seem to be health oriented and tend to their helth with all kinds of herbs. We visited a herb shop in Ciudad del Este and they had a big selection which they seemed to be very proud of. They made a big point about other countries not taking care of their health like they do.

Once on a bus ride I watched a boy sitting on the front seat of the bus sipping mate. Soon he was "feeding" the bus driver with the mate. Every once in a while the driver extended his hand backwards and the boy handed him the cup. After a while a random guy stepped on the bus and sat down. Soon he was drinking from the cup as well.

Buying mate here can be somewhat of a headache if you don't know what you want. The shelves are filled with tens of different sorts of mate packages and you can only guess which one would be the one for you.

And the wrappings of the packages are superb:

For more info on Terere, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terere