La Yerba Mate, a national beverage of Uruguay

Mate, mate everywhere! Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay are well-known for mate, a hot beverage similar to a tea. It's actually an infusion of yerba mate, leaves from the mate bush.

The thermos is filled with hot water and the mate (container for the yerba leaves, historically made from a dried gourd) is constantly replenished with the water.

You drink the tea through a bombilla, a strainer spoon that is unique to the Southern Cone region of Latin America.

It is very common to see people walking with a thermos under one arm and the mate container in the other hand as they walk down the street, get on the bus, at a game, everywhere.

This is a typical vending machine at all gas stations. Put your thermos under the spigot, pay about 50 cents (U.S. equivalent) and your thermos will be filled with hot water.

Do you see Alcito near the spout??

At the open-air market. Typical leather carriers for your yerba equipment so you can always have the bombilla, thermos, yerba leaves, sugar, and mate container with you. 

At the hotel where we stayed, everyone dropped off their empty thermos before breakfast and on their way out, picked up their thermos full of hot water for their day's supply of mate. It costs about $.50 to fill up a thermos.

A common yerba mate container for the table or carrying around.

The purple hot water thermos at school, in the teachers' break room. (the break room was actually just the kitchen.)

You can see the mate container filled with the yerba leaves. They fill the mate almost to the top with the leaves and then pour the water over the leaves and let it steep a bit. They stir it with the bombilla as it's steeping.

You can see some dulce de leche in the bowl to the right of Alcito. They often spread this on bread for morning snack time.

Mate containers for sale at a local market. They are sold everywhere.

Bombillas for sale, straw-like strainers for drinking the yerba.

This is in the chambers of the Maldonado government house. (similar to a state house). You can see the man in the middle with his thermos, drinking mate. 

The pages in the Chamber were busy running back and forth with thermoses, filling them with hot water for the representatives. A bit different from  our visit to the Augusta Statehouse with Ana in February 2013. We didn't see even one mate drinker in Augusta.