Apparently,

Because of things like Coriolis effect and convective currents, there just aren’t winds that blow across the equator, not at the scale that would blow a hurricane from one hemisphere to the other anyway.

Winds tend to blow along and away from the equator, not across it.

The earth spins faster at the equator, which is the reason for the rotation of hurricanes. They spin counter clockwise north of the equator and clockwise south of it.

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/coriolis-effect/

Edit: The reason they don't cross is not because of the Coriolis effect working against the original rotation direction if a hurricane crosses the equator, but rather because the storms are moving away from the equator

https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/ASK/hurricanes.html

This sounds interesting as heck, what do you mean this map is a great illustration of the original meaning of the word?

For some reason I thought the word typhoon popped into vernacular around the 1940s, but I think that story might be made up now that I'm older and thinking about it.

racism

Hurricanes aren't indigenous to south america, but if they spread there they will have no natrual predators and become extremely invasive

The Andes are so tall, they slow the winds. (My guess. I am not a geographer)

Give it a few more years...

Most map projections dramatically underestimate the size of the Pacific Ocean:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/point-nemo

We're just not used to seeing this half of the planet depicted, and the Pacific IS almost half of the entire planet.

It is centered on the Pacific Ocean, which is a bit unusual indeed

This probably isn't what happened to you, but my brain assumed the dark areas were the land masses for a good long while until I realized why it looked like a nonsense map lol

Looks pretty typical for an Aussie. Pacific in the middle.