Vacation Time! Don’t Forget Passports, Flip-flops — and Tea
Trip planning began in 2019, but the big vacation to Greece never happened, thanks to COVID. Next month, however, the whole family finally piles into a jet, flies to Santorini, and devotes two weeks to roaming the islands, beaches, food, history and culture of the cradle of democracy.
Flip-flops and bathing suits for the beach? Check. Some dressy clothes for dinners out? Absolutely. Books, cards, downloaded maps, chargers, toothbrushes? These items and many more fill the checklist.
Don’t forget tea and tea accessories. If you are crazy for tea like us, if its daily presence in your life is assumed, you might consider stocking up on teas to enliven the vacation. While tea bags stuffed with inferior black and green tea find their way to most restaurants and markets around the world, getting the good stuff can challenge. Instead of wasting time hunting for favorites, bring them along, as well as a simple tool like a ball-shaped tea infuser to transform so many teaspoons of dry tea into hot cups of liquid pleasure.
We suggest a trio of teas from around the world to complement your trip, blends that offer grand flavor and health benefits, like electrolytes and digestion aids, to help power travelers across their thrilling journeys.
Vacation Teas: Colibri tea, Mexico
Colibri means hummingbird in Spanish, an apt name for this bespoke blend, crafted for us by an employee with deep roots in Mexico. Like hummingbirds, the tea brightens our world with beauty and color.
Colibri’s advantages extend beyond aesthetics, however. Packed with the digestive superstar ginger along with another digestion aid, peppermint, Colibri helps travelers mitigate pain and complications that arise from eating too much — who doesn’t while on vacation? — or consuming something that doesn’t agree with our stomachs.
Colibri’s usefulness for digestion goes even further. The tea finds its foundation in blossoms from the hibiscus plant, which is native to warm temperate, subtropical and tropical regions around the world. Travel across Mexico, and you are likely to encounter Agua de Jamaica, which is iced hibiscus tea and quite similar to our Colibri.
Hibiscus helps all of the tacos, Japanese lagers, German sausages and creamy French sauces travel through the body’s pipes while simultaneously lowering the body’s sodium content. A study in the IOSR Journal of Biotechnology and Biochemistry found that hibiscus may be helpful in treating constipation and optimizing the health of the gastrointestinal system.
With orange peel and cinnamon added for flavor boosts, we think Colibri is a must for any travel.
Vacation Teas: Rooibos Provence, France
We often champion rooibos tea for its flavor and health benefits. This tea, brewed from a South African shrub and sipped constantly by people from Pretoria to Cape Town (an increasingly across the globe), offers a substantial wealth of electrolytes, which are minerals in the body with electric charges. These minerals help the body regulate chemical reactions and optimize fluids both inside and outside of cells.
What’s the key ingredient in Gatorade? Electrolytes! Athletes routinely supplement their workout regimens with electrolyte-spiked beverages, including rooibos. The tea’s wallop of electrolytes makes rooibos a superb addition to any vacation, whether it involves spending days touring Greek architectural sites or just hanging out on a California beach. Both activities demand thirst quenching, and few things achieve that better than electrolyte beverages. Unlike Gatorade or many other sports drinks, our contains no preservatives, additives or sweeteners. It’s all natural.
We find our Rooibos Provence especially lovely, packed with rooibos, elderberry, rosehips, blueberries, rose petals and lavender. Each sip is like a subtle invitation to Southern France.
Vacation Teas: Moroccan Mint, Morocco
If you happen to visit Morocco this summer, then you won’t need this tea; people across the North African country drink it all day long. Otherwise, don’t forget our house blend of Moroccan Mint! It offers jolts of energy, digestive assistance and strong flavor with every cup.
This powerful tea combines a green tea called “gunpowder” that is rolled into small round pellets with spearmint. The gunpowder tea delivers bold flavor and stimulation from caffeine, and the sweet spearmint balances the gunpowder’s robust nature. To emulate how people in Morocco drink Moroccan Mint, add some rock sugar to the cup; in Morocco, the tea is quite sweet.
Finally, don’t forget to add a tea strainer to the checklist. While we enjoy using a wide range of pots for brewing tea at home, we leave them at home while on vacation and use simple, portable strainers like tea eggs and tea tongs. You can find a diversity of portable devices for brewing whole-leaf tea here.
Bon voyage, Ku Cha friends! We hope your vacation season sparkles this year.
