Buenos Aires: 15 Shopping Ideas for Travelers, Buenos Aires, Argentina (B)

Other than a cool place to be and a dream destination for many adventure-minded folk, Buenos Aires is a great culture hub where one can experience first-hand all that Argentina has to offer - great football, terrific wine, killer steaks, and much much more. This guide is to help you steer yourself in the right direction towards some of the most notable items closely associated with Argentinian way of life.

Mate is the Argentine equivalent of tea and an integral part of the local culture. In fact, the city’s “porteños” (locals) don’t go anywhere without their mate kit, which comprises a special mate cup or matecito (traditionally a hollowed out gourd), a bombilla (metal straw flattened at one end and perforated at the other), a flask of hot water and a bag of herby yerba leaves that come from an evergreen tree. Drinking mate is a very sociable custom and comes with its own set of rules. To make the mate brew, you have to fill the matecito half full with yerba leaves and slowly add very hot (but not boiling) water from a flask. The cup is passed around a group of people in a clockwise order. Each drinker sips the mate through the bombilla before handing it back to the mate maker to be refilled. It’s either drunk “amagro” (bitter) or dulce (sweetened with sugar). ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).