Surprising Things that Simply Don’t Exist in South America

Having now traveled extensively through five different South American countries, I’ve started to notice a handful of things that are common in North America but more or less nonexistent in South America. (The reverse is also true but I think most people expect to find exotic foods and such when they travel to foreign lands.)

Peanut Butter

I already mentioned in a previous post how difficult it was to find peanut butter in Uruguay. Well it turns out that it isn’t just Uruguay. Peanut butter simply isn’t a thing in South America.

What they tend to prefer instead is dulce de leche (caramel). Though I have found that cream cheese and dulce de leche on toast makes a wonderful breakfast snack.

Lemons

Go into any mid-priced restaurant in the U.S. and there’s about a 100% certainty they will have sliced lemon. Unless they also have a serve alcohol, it’s almost equally certain that they will not have lime.

In most parts of South America, limes are the standard. They can be found everywhere.

To illustrate how rare lemons are, let me tell a short enecdote. In Spanish, limón means both lemon and lime. If you say limón to a Spanish speaker in South America, they will assume you mean lime. If you go the extra step to say a “yellow lemon” (limón amarillo), they will likely think you are talking about an unripe lime.

Grapefruit

There are citrus fruits in South America. Mostly multiple varieties of limes and oranges. Orange juice and orange flavored foods are quite common. Grapefruit and grapefruit juice is not.

As someone who loves grapefruit juice, I find this distressing.

Wind

Getting away from food, it is simply not windy in South America.

I noticed this on my first visit to Perú in 2014. At the time, I though perhaps it was just Cusco and Machu Picchu. That seemed odd since both are in the mountains and mountainous areas are generally windy but my base of experience was pretty narrow at the time.

Since then, I have been all throughout Perú, Ecuador, Colombia, Uruguay, and Argentina. None of them are windy.

Thats not to say that wind doesn’t exist. It’s just that all weather patterns are milder in the Southern Hemisphere. I noticed the same thing in South Africa in 2016-2017. Less wind, less rain, narrower temperature swings.