At some point on this trip, I regained my taste for plain black tea. What I mean is, when traveling, whether on an airplane, bus, or train, or at the included breakfast at a hotel/hostel, one is often given the choice for coffee or tea, and the tea that comes is a plain black tea bag. This was one that I had at my hotel in San Juan, Argentina today. Earlier this year, I pretty much couldn’t drink this tea. I had been able to before, but at some point I couldn’t stand the taste of it. Even slightly higher quality English Breakfast teas were completely unpalatable to me. This trip, I started out declining such tea when offered… but then one morning I decided I needed a caffeine boost (and I absolutely don’t do coffee), so I got the tea bag and dumped tons of sugar into it and drank it. Now I add less sugar, but sometimes I feel like I need sugar to make it taste like anything. As it is usually I find them way too weak and steep them for a long time. Sometimes when I order tea I use my own tea sachet that I have brought with me this trip, but only when I get a small pot of hot water; a teacup of hot water would be way too little for a whole sachet.
Anyway, I’m glad I can drink them again, because even crappy tea is better than no tea at all, for me. Now so far it’s only been tea produced in Argentina, and maybe they don’t use some variety of black tea that others do that I dislike. But maybe the world of unflavored blacks is opening up to me once more!
Edit: I also wanted to add that Argentines apparently do not like Earl Grey. I have seen one Earl Grey offered anywhere since I’ve been here! Glad I brought my own…
