Cusco: What did I just drink?

July 15, 2013 5:52 PM

In the plazas in Cusco the vendors sell some kind of sweet tea, but my Spanish wasn't good enough to figure out exactly what was going into the tea. On the right side of the cart were five or six bottles filled with brightly colored liquids. In the middle of the cart was a cauldron of boiling water and herbs. The herbs had small leaves and lots of seeds - it wasn't coca. The tea was made with a shot of sugar syrup, splashes from each of the colored liquids except for the dark green one (never the green one! and not all carts even had the green liquid), and a large scoop of the herbal tea. The result was a sweet, somewhat fruity, hot tea. If anyone is familiar with this, do you have any idea what any of the herbs or syrups were?
posted by kanewai to Food & Drink (1 answer total)

Best answer: Emoilente! Man, there's no telling what's in that stuff. Most vendors mix pretty much every Andean herb around. Maca, Cat's Claw, Muna, alfalfa... It does wonders for many ailments though.Here's a recipe, but there's all sorts of articles around.
posted by piedmont at 6:02 PM on July 15, 2013 [6 favorites]