The Hosteria garden
Hate to keep mentioning breakfasts, but the one we had at Hosteria Chimehuin was a dream come true. A portion of 9 different cakes and pastries which the Argentineans seem to excel in. Perfect cycling food! The grounds of the hostel were well watered and immaculately manicured so everything was a vibrant green. It was full of fishermen and their long suffering wives following them with bags containing flasks for their ‘mate’. It would have been a relaxing place to unwind and spend a few days if the weather was not about to change. The wind was very strong today and despite a paved road we struggled. Lots of roadside Lupins and Broom marked the line of the road ahead and provided a colourful foreground to a backdrop of distant volcanoes and craggy peaks. Decided to stop at an ACA (similar to our AA) campsite in San Martin which was advertised as a family campsite. Between 10.00 pm and 12.00am hundreds of student backpackers arrived and proceeded to noisily pitch tents (all of which must have been brand new the time it took to shout instructions and argue with one another), gather twigs and chop down trees for firewood. Out tent was pitched 2m from a brick bar-b-cue pit and at 10.30 some of them started a fire in it and gathered around. We joined them (just to help extinguish any cinders which landed on the tent and share cake)…well we offered cake as a plea bargain! They were Civil Engineering students so there was some debate on how to arrange the firewood and support the cooking pot. All around people were scouring the ground for hair thin twiglets, snapping branches and heaving rootballs from the ground to keep the fires burning. After eating there was lots of singing in deep gruff manly voices and that was just the women! At 1.00pm we thought it might be calming down with sound of gentle slurping. Unfortunately it was not Horlicks but the mild herbal stimulant drink Yerba Mate, which meant we had 10 minutes of relative calm before it all wound again! (Drinking mate with friends from a shared hollow gourd with a metal straw is a ritual that seems to be practiced in campsites, on the street, on garage forecourts and in cars......everywhere in fact) This time it was the unique sound of ‘shouty singing' that either means football chants or patriotic songs. The ‘mate’ also seemed to have a detrimental effect on their hearing as they had to shout quite loudly to one another even though they were sat next to each other. It was all in good spirit and there was no aggression or drunken staggering as might have been the case at home in the height of the summer holidays when beer might be the drink of choice. At 4.00 we eventually got some sleep and vowed to move our tent as far away from a bar-b cue pit as possible!
According to Wikipedia, so it must be true: 'Sharing mate is ritualistic and has its own set of rules. Usually one person, the host or whoever brought the mate, prepares the drink and refills the gourd with water.The gourd is passed around, often in a circle, and each person finishes the gourd before giving it back to the brewer. The gourd (also called a mate) is passed in a clockwise order. Since maté can be re-brewed many times, the gourd is passed until the water runs out. When a person no longer wants to take maté, they say "gracias" ("thank you") to the brewer when returning the gourd to signify they don't want any more.'
