Road-tripping with your Yerba Mate

Sharing Mate with friends on whilst on the road.

Road-trips and “overlanding” are becoming more and more popular, and are replacing air travel. Road=trips with friends allow for more flexible plans, to see more of local cultures and meet more likeminded people along the way. Also, when compared to flying, road-trips are more environmentally friendly, with a significantly lower CO2 footprint!

In South America where distances are huge! Just for a sense of perspective, the drive from Bariloche in Patagonia, Argentina, to Manaus in the Amazon in Brazil, is over 6,100km’s! Drinking Mate on the road has a very long history amongst truck drivers, race car drivers as well as travellers discovering everything from Patagonia, to the Andes and the Amazon basin. Yerba Mate’s unique combination of caffeine, its slow-drinking method, and other micronutrients helps keep drivers’ cognitive function focused, alert, and without the “jitters” of other drinks such as coffee.

Closer to home, here in the UK, taking Mate along on trips into the European continent is a great idea. Simply with a hot water flask and your Mate kit, you and your travel companions and enjoy a morning Mate and conversation whilst on the road, or an afternoon pick-me-up during longer drives.

My own Mate on a rest stop in France, on way from London to ski in Austria.

Mate in Motorsport

Motorsport has an incredibly rich history in South America, producing many, many world-title winning drivers, from Juan Manuel Fangio, to Ayrton Senna and Nelson Piquet. Yerba Mate has been widely adopted by teams and drivers because of its ability to keep you alert and focused. The most epic of races in South America is the Carrera Panamericana - a 3,500km run roughly following sections of the Panamerican Highway, that started in 1950.

The Panamerican Highway

Back in the 50’s drivers had to self-support, carrying fuel, tools, spares food with them. Here is a great photo of “el Maestro” J.M. Fangio and his navigator, along with their Mate flask handily strapped to the dashboard of their 1939 Chevrolet coupe, en-route from Buenos Aires to Caracas, racing in the gruelling 1948 South American road racing GP.