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Published: August 14th 2006
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Mate
This is not my photo (I found it on the internet) but I wanted you to see what the whole mate thing looks like. It's really hard to be sick in Mexico. There is food everywhere, on every street corner, and the smells and colors and spices are so enticing that you want to try all kinds of things, even when your stomach is saying NOOOOO! Not so in Argentina. Food, consisting of an almost non-existent breakfast, a substantial lunch between 12 and 2, and a late dinner around 9 or 10, is pretty much the same all the time. Spices are not so popular here, and if you don't eat meat, you quickly get tired of the pizza or pasta choices. What is omnipresent here is Mate.
Mate is almost a religion. It is a tea of sorts, but it is so much more than that. It consists of a "Mate", the container where you put the tea, the tea itself "Yerba Mate" and a straw with slots at the end to strain the tea leaves, the "Bombilla" made out of aluminum, silver, or bambu. Making the mate is a whole process and each time I talk to someone about how to make it, I learn something new. The basics procedure consists of filling your Mate, which is
usually a gourd which may
The Devil's Throat at High Noon
The noon sun added to the catacysmic feel of the Devil's Throat, the only place where the splendor of the falls could be felt. be covered on the outside with leather or metal, with the Yerba Mate, making sure to turn it over several times so that the small leaves end up on the top and not in your mouth. Then you make a hole in the Yerba with your bombilla and slowly add the water (very warm but NOT boiling because then you ruin the flavor of the Yerba) and sugar, if you like it sweet. Then, in one or two sips, you sip out the tea through your straw. You'd think you'd burn your lips with a metal straw, and it happens, but only if the person making the mate has used water that was too hot. Once you've drunk your mate, you refill the gourd with water, leaving the same leaves and bombilla in place, and offer it to each person that you are with. Being offered mate is a lovely sign of inclusion, and being able to offer mate (especially when it's well made), gets you big points.
People travel all over, to work, on vacation, or to see Iguazu Falls, with their Mate, the Yerba and a thermos full of warm water, and take frequent mate breaks. Yesterday,
when I went to Iguazu Falls (finally) the National Institute for the Promotion of Mate was there with stunning young women passing out cheap mates, yerba and bambu bombillas as souvenirs. Everyone loves free stuff (and looking at beautiful young women), so people took the gifts, but only to take home as they had already brought their own mate and thermos.
At high noon, standing in the bright sun in the middle of the dry jungle where the temperature easily reached 100 degrees, it killed me to see everyone walking around with thermoses of hot water. It turns out that mate is supposed to be good for you when you are hot. The Jesuits discovered mate from the Guarani, who used it for all kinds of medicinal purposes. It has an appetite suppressing effect as well as a substance similar to caffeine, which may help to explain the amazing bodies that many Argentinians have, and depending on who you are talking to, all kinds of healthful properties. It's main function though seems to be social, as mate is almost always shared. At the falls, one person in the family would be carrying around the mate, and another the thermos,
Dry river
This riverbed should be teeming with water. or sometimes they had picnic baskets filled entirely with mate paraphernalia.
I myself was trying to hydrate like mad, since the usual cooling effect of the spray from the falls was not present since they are in the middle of a historic drought, and the last time the falls had this little water was 1978. It is cool, on one hand, to be able to see the rocks under what is usually covered by hundreds of waterfalls coming together to form torrents of water, but on the other hand, kind of depressing to go to this place that is supposed to be one of the wonders of the world, and now it's just basically one big waterfall, which is cool, but nothing like it should be with the water that is supposed to be there. That said, I did my nerdy teacher thing and hiked through the jungle taking pictures of flora and fauna for my Rain Forest unit for my first graders. Does that make any part of this tax deductible?
So, in any case, I've finally seen the famous Iguazu Falls, though for me the hiking through the jungle was more exciting than the actual falls, even
Walkway destroyed by flood
Hard to imagine these days. though I abandoned common sense and did it during the hottest hours of the day. Oh, when will I learn that there is a reason for getting up early and then taking the afternoon siesta?
I'm off tomorrow, but still not sure where to. I am seeing about changing my ticket from Rio to Buenos Aires and staying in this region, because there are so many interesting things to explore and I feel like more time here to really explore Argentina instead of a week and a half in Brazil would be more satisfying. It is going to be hard to leave Iguazu, where I've made friends. I even have local female friends, who are hard to come by. Understandably, local women have a less than ideal picture of foreign backpackers who often come through, hook up with their boyfriends and friends and leave. I consider it a major accomplishment when I can break through this stereotype.
Until the next town, wherever it may be,
Cora
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Anna
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hahaha- you are too cute. Thanks for the fascinating updates. Check to see if the madres de los desaparecidos still march in front of the Casa Rosada- that is intense and very moving. Te mando besos y abrazos~