Traveling Without Actually Going Anywhere: Universal Yums from South America

The snacks from this month’s Universal Yums subscription box did not come from one country like it normally does. Instead, it came from multiple countries from one continent: South America. Most of the snacks came from Colombia though. I wish all of the snacks came from one country instead of an entire continent, but I still enjoyed the snacks!

First up were plantain chips from Ecuador. It was funny because I had just tried some plantain chips that a co-worker had brought in from Trader Joe’s during lunch that day! These chips from Universal Yums were thin, salty, and crunchy chips, which was good, but they had way too much lemon seasoning! I’ll have to ask my co-worker for the brand of the chips she got, because I liked hers better than these from Ecuador.

Next, I tried chili pepper flavored bites from Brazil. Surprisingly, they were not that spicy! They tasted like crunchy pockets of air. I then tasted cookies and cream cookie clusters from Colombia. They were delicious blobs of chocolate, Oreo cookies, and cream. A vanilla yogurt flavored plum cake from Argentina was up next. This fluffy cake had an interesting flavor that was hard to describe. Maybe it’s because I don’t really know what plums taste like!

From Colombia, I ate a coconut rice crispy bar. I don’t particularly like coconut, but it did taste like it had some caramel in it, which was tasty! Also from Colombia, I tried coffee flavored chews. Did you know that Colombia has over 560,000 coffee farms?! That is crazy!! These chews tasted like coffee toffee, and I definitely noticed a distinct coffee taste. Lastly, I tried a passion fruit flavored bubblegum pop, from you guessed it — Colombia! I quickly realized that I do not like passion fruit flavored snacks.

From the booklet, I learned that Ecuador became the first government in 2008 to grant constitutional rights to nature to ensure environmental protection. Also, an Argentinian woman, Silvia Morello de Palma became the first woman to give birth on Antarctica! I bet her child was pretty cool! Haha! Furthermore, there is a hotel made almost entirely of salt in the country of Bolivia near their salt flats. Last but not least, the oldest mummy is actually found in Chile, not Egypt! The Chinchorro mummies were discovered in 1917 and are 2,000 years older than Egyptian mummies.

Next month’s box will come with snacks from South Korea!