Pass the mate (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

I'm a huge tea drinker at home, I especially love green tea. Well here in Argentina they drink yerba mate, which some will disagree with, but to me it is very similar to green tea. Not to mention, you drink it in a very stylish fashion with a cup made out of an old fruit shell and a fancy straw that acts as a filter as well.  I bought everything a while ago and just watched on youtube how to do it, I guess each Argentino takes pride in their way of preparing it. Anyway, I have been drinking it solo ever since and discovered the other day that it is a very social kind of activity, in which you continually pass it on to your circle of friends. It's interesting because the cup is so full of mate that you don't really get to drink a whole lot each time, but then you have to pass it on. It's a unique and cool ritual. I love it.

On that note, I'd also like to add that I've been drinking a lot of Argentinian wine! It's so cheap! Probably one of the cheapest things you can buy in this city, I swear. A cup of coffee from any old cafe (and there are a tonne of them on every street) is sometimes more expensive than a bottle of wine in the grocery store. Mmm.. vino!

Lastly, I might as well throw in that when I was in Lima they had a similar ritual of passing on the drink, but it was with beer. It's normal to get a 750ml bottle of beer and then share it amongst 4 or 5 friends, but only using one cup, normally a plastic cup. If you have the bottle in your hand then that means you're next in line. Once you receive the empty cup, you fill up your glass about a third of the way, pass on the bottle to the next friend, drink your beer, dump out on the ground any remaining suds at the bottom of the cup, and... pass it on...

At one point, in the big group that I was sharing beer with, I asked "why don't we all just get our own glass?". That didn't go over very well.