Mate is the hot version of terere. It is yerba mate, which is mix of leaves from a South American shrub. The yerba comes in a coarse powder that you put in a cup and drink through a medal straw that has a filter on the end. It’s very bitter, a lot like green tea, and is caffeinated. To drink terere you use cold water and to drink mate you use scolding hot water. I have burned my mouth many times.

Many Paraguayans, at least in the more rural areas, start their days well before six, and mate is a common starter. During the winter mate is drunk at almost any time, but never with food and usually not directly before eating or after eating, to stay warm.

You usually heat up about a liter of water and cup by cup drink all of that using the same yerba—like if you were to use the same tea bag to drink a whole teapot by pouring the hot water into your mug every time you finished one cup.

Like terere, there are a ton of medicinal herbs people put in their mate for every ailment from a sore throat to high blood pressure. Most herbs do something for the stomach, mouth, or throat. You can drink mate alone, like what I’m doing as I write this post, or it can be a social thing. Just like with terere, mate cups are communal and one person pours the water into the cup and passes it around the mate circle, each person takes their turn in order.

Chipa waiting to go in the oven.

Chipa is a kind of cheesy biscuit. Its ingredients include cheese, cassava flour, corn flour, animal fat, milk, anise, and eggs. It’s a common snack. People sell it on the bus, at soccer games, along the highways, and on street corners. People serve it at memorial services (which in Paraguay are nine days long and can also occur on the anniversary of people’s deaths).

Chipa is crumbly and cheesy—and amazingly yummy when it is hot. If it sits around for much more than a day, it can get rock hard. During Semana Santa, which is the week leading up to Easter, it is traditional to make a ton of chipa or only eat chipa. During that week, my jaw hurt after eating so much hard chipa.

Chipa comes in a variety of shapes but the most common are circles and sticks. It is one of the traditional foods of Paraguay, in fact, in a number of traditional Paraguayan dances the dancers hold a basket of chipa.

There are somewhere between 7 and 12 foods that make up the bulk of the Paraguayan diet. Most of those foods are made of the same things. Most of them are carbohydrates with some oil or fat added. A lot of them involve meat.

What amazes me is how excited Paraguayans are to eat these traditional foods. Despite the repetition, Paraguayans I’ve eaten with talk about sopa paraguaya like it’s a rare delicacy and chipa like it’s the “be all, end all” of foods. Chipa sells like wildfire at the soccer games and on the commuter buses.

Terere and mate is the same way. The Paraguayans I’ve drunk mate or terere with have probably drunk it almost a million times, but they still comment on how good it is every single time.

I wish I could enjoy the same food over and over again. It would make dieting a lot easier. I can’t even eat my favorite foods with the frequency that Paraguayans eat their traditional foods. How does one develop such an appreciation for life?