Mate

Mate is heavy. It's at least as strong as coffee, if not stronger (at least the brand that I have, "Nobleza Gaucha"). Yesterday I had "only" two gourds of it, the last one at around 7 pm, and I'm still kinda doped (around 11 am). This is really the first time that I experience caffeine as such a heavy drug.

Mate rocks. No, I don't refer to the iced tea version of it. I mean real Yerba Mate. Yesterday I got a wonderful mate (the gourd where you drink the mate out of), a bombilla (the metal straw) and a package of yerba mate, straight out of Argentina. Drinking mate is really a great pleasure, as it's tasty (even while you don't add any sugar like you do with normal tea here), it makes you awake and less hungry, and it got all the positive effects of coffee without the negative side effects of it (my heartbeat rapidly increases when I drink coffee, and I get a bit shaky and nervous - not so with mate).