Mate Mishaps

Dear Reader, Allow us a moment to reflect on a cultural phenomenon of this querida Argentina.

The ritual of mate. Mate for those who don´t know is a type of tea, to be sipped communaly, all through the day here in Argentina. Your protaganists attempting to try out the local culture began their search days after arrival for the necessary goods: a mate gourd (to drink mate out of), a bombilla (the straw that you drink from to filter the herb), and the prized thermos to keep hot water to pour over and over in your gourd.

We purchased our gourd and bombilla from a seemingly nice artisan in Buenos Aires, and in our days of park sitting in rosario needed to complete our kit with a thermos. Upon looking all over town for a store which sells the Thermos, we noticed, that a) not a damn person in Argentina can understand our spanish b) termo is indeed the word or way to ask for a thermos 3) hardware stores sell thermoses 4) thermoses break really easily...

after an hour of searching and succesfully purchasing a thermos, Chris began to play it as a drum and completely shattered the inside. boo hoo. 35 pesos down the drain. We then purchased another, ´the best´ the man in hardware store said, and drank our precious mate in the park. Upon arriving at the hostel we were informed that our thermos sucked, and that if you buy a plastic thermos you are a sucker because they break constantly. So much for being accustomed to local tradition. In any case, we enjoyed our mate with a river view. Fun. In other mate mishaps, it was discovered our gourd, which is black, leaks dye when water touches it. So many thing have become partially blue in our hostel.

Yeap, we are bumbling tourists.

So we are excited to be going to our first farm south of Mendoza this evening. Its in a town called Tunuyan and the farm is named Madre Tierra.