A book that should be written

We thought we had the tereré/mate thing all figured out, turns out we were wrong. A book titled
"Yerba for dummies" should be mandatory reading for anyone traveling to Paraguay.

Yerba Mate - the leaves of a certain tree carefully harvested and dried.

Tereré - Yerba Mate drunk with cold water.

Mate - Yerba Mate drunk with hot water.

Anyways, it should be simple to drink right? Put the yerba (dried leaves) in the guampa (hollowed out cow horn) add water and sip with a bombilla (metal straw).

Not quite.

-We know that the first time you add water it must be luke warm to prevent a bitter flavour (blog spot has an American spell check and doesn't like how I spell flavour - sorry to all our readers from Ohio, Indiana and Texas).
-We know that you drink till the water is gone and a shulcksing sound is made when you suck the bombilla.
-We know that the guampa is passed around the circle and everyone takes turns drinking from it.
-We know that sometimes special herbs are added to the water for different flavours/health benefits.

What we didn't know is when herbs can be added to the water and when they can't.

We had some company over one afternoon and decided to add lemon leaves to the water. When asked by our company what we were doing, we explained that we like the lemon flavour. They said they would try it.

That's when we found out the rules.
1) Mate is drunk before breakfast - certain herbs such as anise, boldo, jaguarete ka'a . . . are allowed.

2) After breakfast tereré is drunk (or mate if the weather is cold) with herbs allowed. Common ones include lemon leaves, cedron, mint and many more depending on which illness you are trying to prevent or cure. We pick based on the flavours we like.

3) In the afternoon, you never add herbs to your water (i think it bothers the stomach - so does drinking water after eating pork).

4) In the evening you drink mate and are allowed to add herbs again.

I'm assuming that there are many other rules I don't know but I'm going to find them out. Someone has to make money writing that book.