99 Fun Facts About South America

How many sovereign countries are there in South America?

12 sovereign states, of which Brazil is by far the largest; French Guiana is an overseas region of France and the Falkland Islands a British territory, so neither counts.

The Amazon River carries roughly what share of all the river water flowing into the world's oceans?

One-fifth, or about 20%: its average discharge of roughly 220,000 cubic metres per second exceeds that of the next seven largest rivers combined.

The Amazon rainforest gets its name from Francisco de Orellana, who borrowed it from what?

The female warriors of Greek myth, the Amazons, came to Orellana's mind when his 1542 expedition reported being attacked by fighting women on the river; they may have been long-haired men.

What percentage of the Amazon rainforest lies within Brazil?

About 60% of the forest is Brazilian, with the remainder spread across the Andean states and the Guiana Shield; Colombia holds the third-largest share.

The Amazon rainforest spans the territory of how many nations?

Nine: eight sovereign states plus French Guiana, which is an overseas region of France rather than an independent country.

Roughly how many individual trees are estimated to stand in the Amazon rainforest?

390 billion trees, by a 2013 survey led by Hans ter Steege, belonging to about 16,000 species; just 227 'hyperdominant' species account for half of them.

Over half the dust fertilising the Amazon comes from one depression in which desert?

The Sahara's Bodélé Depression in northern Chad, the dried bed of an ancient lake, sends phosphorus-rich dust across the Atlantic every year.

About how many insect species live in the Amazon rainforest?

2.5 million is the usual estimate, a large fraction of all insect species on Earth and mostly undescribed; E. O. Wilson once found 43 ant species on a single tree.

Which is the largest city in the Amazon basin?

Manaus, with over two million people, sits where the dark Rio Negro meets the sandy Solimões, which flow side by side unmixed for kilometres; its 1896 opera house was built with rubber money.

The Amazon represents roughly what share of the rainforest remaining on Earth?

Over half of the rainforest left on Earth is Amazonian: the forest covers about 5.5 million square kilometres, more than the next two largest, in the Congo and New Guinea, combined.

The Amazon River rises in the Andes of which country?

The most distant source is usually placed on Nevado Mismi. The river then crosses the whole width of the continent to reach the Atlantic in Brazil.

What distinction do the Andes hold among the world's mountain ranges?

The longest continental mountain range in the world runs about 8,900 km through seven countries and holds the highest volcanoes on Earth, topped by Ojos del Salado at 6,893 metres.

Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas, is in which country?

Argentina's Mendoza Province holds the 6,961-metre peak, the highest anywhere outside Asia; Swiss guide Matthias Zurbriggen made the first recorded ascent in 1897.

Angel Falls, the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall at 979 metres, is in which country?

Venezuela's Canaima National Park holds the falls, which plunge off the Auyán-tepui table mountain; they are named after Jimmie Angel, an American pilot who crash-landed on top in 1937.

What has the lifeless soil of the Atacama Desert been used for?

Testing instruments for Mars missions: in 2003 researchers repeated the Viking landers' life-detection tests on Atacama soil and found nothing, and some weather stations there have never recorded rain.

Lake Titicaca, often called the world's highest navigable lake, sits on the border of which two countries?

Bolivia and Peru share the lake, which lies at 3,812 metres in the Altiplano and is South America's largest freshwater lake by volume.

The Uros people of Lake Titicaca live on floating islands made from what?

Layers of totora reed, a buoyant sedge, rot from below and must be topped up constantly, so the islands are rebuilt continuously and last a few decades at most.

Machu Picchu is believed to have been built around 1450 as an estate for which Inca emperor?

Pachacuti, the ninth Sapa Inca, is credited with commissioning it as a royal estate; Hiram Bingham brought it to world attention in 1911 while hunting for the lost city of Vilcabamba.

The Galápagos Islands, which Darwin visited aboard HMS Beagle in 1835, belong to which country?

Ecuador annexed the islands in 1832, three years before Darwin's visit; they lie about 1,000 km west of the mainland on the equator.

The Galápagos Islands are named after which animal?

The giant tortoise: 'galápago' is an old Spanish word for tortoise, and Spanish sailors named the islands for the huge animals they found there; the archipelago was among the first World Heritage Sites, in 1978.

Easter Island, home to nearly 1,000 moai statues, has belonged to which country since 1888?

The Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen named it on Easter Sunday 1722. The nearest inhabited land is Pitcairn Island, more than 2,000 km away.

The Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is the largest of what in the world?

Salt flat: the crust covers about 10,582 square kilometres and turns into a giant mirror after rain; beneath it lies most of Bolivia's lithium, among the largest resources on Earth.

The Iguazu Falls, the world's largest waterfall system, sit on the border between which two countries?

Argentina and Brazil share the falls, with about half the river's flow crashing into the Devil's Throat; the name is Guarani for 'big water', and Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly exclaimed 'Poor Niagara!'

Simón Bolívar, 'El Libertador', was born in 1783 in which city?

Caracas was his birthplace; he led six modern nations to independence from Spain, two of which bear his name, and he died of tuberculosis in 1830 at Santa Marta.

Which is the only independent country outside Europe where Dutch is the official language?

Suriname, independent since 1975 after three centuries as a Dutch colony, is South America's smallest sovereign state by area and population; about 90% of it is forest, the highest share of any nation.

Which is the only country in mainland South America with English as its official language?

Guyana, a British colony until 1966, takes its name from an Amerindian phrase meaning 'land of many waters'; huge offshore oil finds from 2015 transformed its economy.

In which South American country do over 90% of people speak Guarani alongside Spanish?

It is one of the continent's two landlocked countries (Bolivia is the other) and co-owns the Itaipu Dam with Brazil, one of the world's biggest hydroelectric plants.

Which Colombian city is nicknamed the 'City of Eternal Spring' for its mild climate?

Medellín sits at about 1,500 metres in the Aburrá Valley, which keeps temperatures mild all year; it is Colombia's second-largest city.

Brasília, Brazil's purpose-built capital, was inaugurated in which year?

Inaugurated on 21 April 1960 after just 41 months of building, it follows Lúcio Costa's plan, often likened to an aeroplane, with Oscar Niemeyer designing the main buildings; UNESCO listed it in 1987.

At roughly 3,650 metres, which city is the highest administrative capital in the world?

Bolivia's constitutional capital is actually Sucre. La Paz also runs the world's largest urban cable-car network beneath the snow peaks of Illimani.

Which national capital lies closest to the equator?

The line runs through the north of the metropolitan area, hence the nickname 'Mitad del Mundo'. In 1978 Quito and Kraków became the first two UNESCO World Heritage cities.

Which city was Brazil's colonial capital until Rio de Janeiro took over in 1763?

Salvador, founded in 1549 as the seat of the Portuguese governors-general, remained capital until 1763; its Pelourinho district is a World Heritage Site.

Cape Horn was named in 1616 after a city in which country?

The Netherlands' port of Hoorn was home to the expedition of Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire, who rounded the cape in January 1616 and named it Kaap Hoorn.

The first FIFA World Cup, in 1930, was hosted and won by which country?

Uruguay, the hosts, won the final 4-2 in front of 68,346 people at the purpose-built Estadio Centenario in Montevideo; only four European teams made the sea voyage.

How many men's FIFA World Cups had Brazil won by the end of 2025, more than any nation?

Five titles: 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002; Brazil was also the only team to have played at every World Cup through 2022.

The Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro stands on top of which mountain?

Corcovado, a 710-metre granite peak in the Tijuca Forest, carries the 30-metre reinforced-concrete and soapstone figure, completed in 1931 to a design by French sculptor Paul Landowski.

Which huge bird appears on the coats of arms of four South American countries?

The Andean condor, with a wingspan of over 3 metres, features on the arms of four countries along the Andes and can soar for hours on mountain updrafts.

The green anaconda of South America holds which record among snakes?

Heaviest of all snakes, though Asia's reticulated python grows longer; anacondas are non-venomous constrictors that take fish, deer, caiman and even capybaras.

The Nazca Lines of southern Peru were made between roughly 500 BC and AD 500 by doing what?

Removing dark pebbles to expose lighter ground gave the lines their contrast, since the reddish-brown surface stones hide a yellow-grey subsoil; more than 70 figures are animals, including a hummingbird, a monkey and a spider.

The tango originated in the 1880s along which river, the natural border between two countries?

The Río de la Plata estuary's two shores, Buenos Aires and Montevideo, jointly got tango onto UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009; its defining instrument, the bandoneón, is a German-invented concertina.

The Rio Carnival, held every year before Lent, first took place in which year?

1723 is the usual date given for the first Entrudo, a rowdy street festival brought by Portuguese settlers; the modern parade of samba schools competes in the purpose-built Sambadrome, opened in 1984.

A Welsh-speaking community has existed in Patagonia since 153 settlers arrived aboard the Mimosa in which year?

1865: the Mimosa landed at what became Puerto Madryn on 28 July, and the colony, Y Wladfa, grew up along the Chubut Valley, where Gaiman and Trelew keep Welsh tea houses and eisteddfods.

Patagonia's name comes from Magellan's term for the local people, whom his crew believed to be what?

Giants, reported Magellan's chronicler Antonio Pigafetta, who wrote that the Europeans' heads reached only to a Tehuelche man's waist; the Tehuelche were tall, but not that tall.

Which crop, now a staple worldwide, originated in the Andes?

The potato was domesticated near Lake Titicaca 7,000 to 10,000 years ago; Spanish ships carried it to Europe in the sixteenth century, and Andean farmers grow thousands of varieties.

Which pre-ceramic civilisation built one of the world's first cities around 3500 BC at Huaricanga?

Caral-Supe, also called Norte Chico, flourished on the desert coast north of Lima; its main city, Caral, raised pyramid mounds around 2600 BC, while Egypt's pyramids were rising.

The Inca Empire's Quechua name, Tawantinsuyu, means 'the land of the' what?

Four regions, or suyus, met at Cusco, the capital from which the empire was ruled from 1438 to 1533; it linked as many as fourteen million people across nearly a hundred ethnic communities.

In which year did Brazil become the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery?

1888: the Lei Áurea, signed by Princess Isabel on 13 May, freed about 700,000 people; Cuba, the last in the Americas before Brazil, had abolished slavery in 1886.

Which Portuguese royal house escaped Napoleon's invasion by fleeing to Brazil?

Braganza: Prince Regent João and the court sailed from Lisbon in November 1807 under British escort and reached Brazil in early 1808, making Rio the seat of the Portuguese empire until 1821.

In which year did Dom Pedro I proclaim Brazil's independence from Portugal?

1822: the 'Cry of Ipiranga' on 7 September declared independence, and Pedro was crowned emperor of Brazil that December; Portugal recognised the split in 1825.

Which semi-aquatic South American mammal, able to weigh more than 60 kg, is the largest living rodent?

Capybara herds live beside rivers and lakes across most of the continent. The animals are superb swimmers and can hold their breath underwater for up to five minutes.

Which African animal has bred wild along Colombia's Magdalena River since escaping a drug lord's private zoo?

Hippopotamus numbers there grew from four animals that Pablo Escobar imported in 1981. Left to roam after his death in 1993, the herd has since multiplied to well over a hundred.

Which climate pattern did Peruvian sailors name for the warm ocean current that arrived around Christmas?

El Niño is short for El Niño de Navidad, 'the Christmas boy', a nod to the newborn Christ. It returns every two to seven years and can shift rainfall around the globe.

Which South Atlantic archipelago, known in Spanish as Las Malvinas, was fought over in a ten-week war in 1982?

The Falklands were seized by Argentina's military government in April 1982 and retaken by a British task force 74 days later. The defeat hastened that government's downfall.

Which pope, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, became the first pontiff from Latin America in 2013?

Francis was also the first Jesuit pope and the first born or raised outside Europe since the 8th century. As a young man he had worked as a bouncer and a janitor.

Which small animal, kept as a pet elsewhere, is a traditional roast dish known as cuy in the Andes?

Guinea pig was domesticated for its meat in the Andes as early as 5000 BC. One famous Last Supper painting in a Peruvian cathedral shows Christ and the disciples dining on it.

Which footballer scored both the 'Hand of God' goal and the 'Goal of the Century' against England in 1986?

Diego Maradona scored the two goals four minutes apart in a World Cup quarter-final. He said the first came 'a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God'.

Which mammal of South America's rainforests grows green algae in its fur as camouflage?

Sloth fur has grooved hairs that host the algae, along with moths found nowhere else. Three-toed species climb down to the ground only about once a week, to relieve themselves.

Which Ecuadorian volcano's summit is the farthest point from Earth's centre, thanks to the equatorial bulge?

Chimborazo stands 6,263 metres above sea level, more than 2,500 metres lower than Everest. But the planet is fattest near the equator, which pushes its peak farther out into space.

Ushuaia, often called the world's southernmost city, is capital of a province named after which archipelago?

Tierra del Fuego, the 'Land of Fire', is said to owe its name to the many fires Magellan's expedition saw burning along the shore in 1520. Two countries have shared the islands since a boundary treaty of 1881.

Which floodplain south of the Amazon, mostly submerged each rainy season, is the world's largest tropical wetland?

The Pantanal takes its name from the Portuguese word for swamp. Roughly 80% of its floodplains go underwater in the rains, feeding a dense array of wildlife.

Which South American lake is lit by the Catatumbo lightning, storms that flash for hours over one river mouth?

Lake Maracaibo's storms gather where the Catatumbo River enters the water. Colonial-era sources call the glow the Lighthouse of Maracaibo, because sailors could steer by it.

Which dam on the Paraná River, shared by Brazil and Paraguay, drowned the mighty Guaíra Falls when it filled?

Itaipu Dam was built jointly after a 1973 treaty, and its construction displaced about 10,000 families. It remains one of the largest hydroelectric plants on Earth.

Which Brazilian metropolis, home to the world's largest Japanese diaspora, is South America's most populous city?

São Paulo overtook Rio de Janeiro as Brazil's biggest city in the mid-20th century. Its Japanese community dates from 1908, when the first workers arrived for the state's coffee plantations.

Which Rio de Janeiro beach district is named after a chapel's replica statue of Bolivia's patron saint?

Copacabana is first of all a lakeside pilgrimage town high in the Andes. Rio's district took the name after a chapel was built there to house a copy of the town's revered Virgin.

Which currency is used in French Guiana, the South American territory that launched the James Webb Space Telescope?

The euro is legal tender there because French Guiana is an overseas department of France and part of the European Union. Its spaceport at Kourou sent the telescope up in 2021.

Which stormy body of water between Cape Horn and Antarctica is named after an Elizabethan English privateer?

Drake Passage carries the Englishman's name, yet Spanish maps call it the Sea of Hoces, after a navigator thought to have been blown into it in 1525, decades before Drake sailed.

Which long-distance road system is broken only by the Darién Gap, roadless jungle on the Panama–Colombia border?

The Pan-American Highway stops at Yaviza and resumes roughly 106 km away at Turbo. Marshland, jungle and opposition from environmental and indigenous groups have kept the gap unpaved.

Which Andean city, said to be laid out in the shape of a puma, was the capital of the Inca Empire?

Cusco astonished the first Spaniards with the beauty of its buildings and its long, regular streets. UNESCO declared the whole city a World Heritage Site in 1983.

Which Inca emperor offered a room filled with gold as ransom, only to be executed by the Spanish in 1533?

Atahualpa promised to fill the room once with gold and twice with silver within two months. The Spanish took the treasure, then accused him of treason and garrotted him anyway.

Which system of knotted cords did the Inca use to record taxes and census counts without writing?

Quipu cords stored numbers in a decimal system, with a knot's position on the cord setting its value. After the conquest many were destroyed by the Spanish as idolatrous.

Which Argentine general crossed the Andes in 1817 to free Chile and later became Protector of Peru?

José de San Martín left the final campaign to Bolívar after the two met behind closed doors at Guayaquil in 1822. He then resigned his command and moved to France.

Which 1494 agreement split newly found lands between Spain and Portugal, handing the Portuguese the coast of Brazil?

Tordesillas moved the Pope's dividing line 270 leagues further west. That put the eastern bulge of the continent on Portugal's side, which is why Brazilians speak Portuguese today.

Which Bolivian city at the foot of Cerro Rico, the 'rich mountain', was the Spanish Empire's main source of silver?

Potosí sits more than 4,000 metres up and once held over 200,000 people. Spanish speakers still say that something precious is 'worth a Potosí'.

Which legend grew from tales of a Muisca ruler who coated himself in gold dust and washed in a sacred lake?

El Dorado means 'the golden one' and at first described the man, not a city. Treasure hunters later tried to drain Colombia's Lake Guatavita in search of his offerings.

Which revolutionary's memoir The Motorcycle Diaries recounts a 1952 journey across South America as a medical student?

Che Guevara set out at 23 on a sputtering 1939 Norton nicknamed La Poderosa, 'the Mighty One'. The trip lasted nine months and covered more than 8,000 km by bike, raft, horse and thumb.

Which Argentine first lady, who died of cancer at 33 in 1952, inspired a hit Andrew Lloyd Webber musical?

Eva Perón was named 'Spiritual Leader of the Nation' by Congress shortly before her death. The musical Evita began as a 1976 concept album and went on to win Broadway's top Tony Award.

On which notorious French Guiana penal colony was Captain Alfred Dreyfus held after his wrongful treason conviction?

Devil's Island gave its name to a French prison system that ran for a century and closed in 1953. Henri Charrière set his bestselling escape memoir Papillon there, though he was never held on it.

Which caffeine-rich infusion, sipped through a metal straw called a bombilla, is Argentina's national drink?

Mate is also the national drink of two neighbouring countries. Its bombilla works as both a straw and a sieve, and was traditionally made of silver.

Which Afro-Brazilian martial art blends kicks and acrobatics with music inside a circle called a roda?

Capoeira is played to the twang of a musical bow called the berimbau. When street capoeira was illegal in Brazil, its players set up their circles beside other outlawed groups.

Which Colombian novelist set One Hundred Years of Solitude in Macondo, a village modelled on his birthplace?

Gabriel García Márquez won the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the novel has sold over fifty million copies. Macondo was mainly inspired by his home town of Aracataca.

Which mellow Brazilian style, born in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1950s, gave the world 'The Girl from Ipanema'?

Bossa nova means 'new trend' or 'new wave' in Portuguese. João Gilberto shaped the style by reducing the beat of a samba percussion band to the strings of one guitar.

Which Brazilian driver won three Formula One world titles with McLaren before a fatal crash at Imola in 1994?

Ayrton Senna was leading the San Marino Grand Prix when he crashed. About three million people turned out for his state funeral, the largest funeral procession in Brazil's history.

Which novel's hero was partly inspired by Alexander Selkirk, a Scot marooned for four years on an island off Chile?

Robinson Crusoe appeared in 1719, a decade after Selkirk's rescue, though Defoe moved the story to the Caribbean. In 1966 the Chilean government renamed the real island after the novel to draw tourists.

Which naturalist, who explored the Americas from 1799 to 1804, gives his name to the cold current off Peru?

Alexander von Humboldt reported measurements of the cold water in 1846, though José de Acosta had found the current some 250 years earlier. It yields nearly a fifth of the world's marine fish catch.

The high Andean borderlands of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile form a 'Triangle' named for which battery metal?

Lithium lies dissolved in brine beneath the region's dry basins. A 2017 estimate put around 54% of the world's reserves inside the triangle.

Which birds have a Galápagos species that is the only one of its kind living north of the equator?

Penguins are thought to have reached the islands on a cold current from the south, and cool water still lets them survive there. The northern tip of Isabela Island just crosses the equator.

Which flightless bird of South America's open plains looks like a small ostrich?

Rhea fathers do the child-rearing: the male incubates from ten to sixty eggs, then charges at any threat to his chicks, even female rheas and humans.

Which Amazon tree product lost Brazil its monopoly after Henry Wickham smuggled seeds out to the British Empire?

Rubber seeds that Wickham shipped out founded plantations in Southeast Asia, ending the Amazon boom. Britain knighted him in 1920 for services to the plantation industry.

In which war of 1879 to 1884 did Bolivia lose its entire coastline and become landlocked?

War of the Pacific fighting began over a ten-centavo tax on nitrate, earning it the nickname Ten Cents War. The victor kept the mineral-rich coast along with territory taken from Bolivia's ally.

Which high plateau of the central Andes, home to Lake Titicaca, is the most extensive on Earth outside Tibet?

The Altiplano averages about 3,750 metres above sea level, only slightly lower than the Tibetan Plateau. Unlike Tibet, it is flanked by massive active volcanoes.

Which Amazon insect, top of the Schmidt sting pain index, is woven into gloves for Sateré-Mawé initiation rites?

Bullet ant stings feel, in Schmidt's words, like walking over flaming charcoal with a nail in your heel. Initiates wear gloves holding 80 of the ants for five minutes or more.

Which Brazilian architect, famed for free-flowing curves, designed the main civic buildings of Brasília?

Oscar Niemeyer said he was drawn to free-flowing, sensual curves like those of his country's mountains and rivers. He also helped design the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Which Yale lecturer, led there by a local farmer in 1911, made Machu Picchu known to the outside world?

Hiram Bingham was hunting for the last capital of the Incas and wrongly took Machu Picchu for it. He later served in the United States Senate until 1933.

Which Colombian painter and sculptor filled his canvases and bronzes with people of plump, exaggerated volume?

Fernando Botero called himself 'the most Colombian of Colombian artists'. His signature look is known as Boterismo, and his sculptures have stood on Park Avenue and the Champs-Élysées.

Which table-top mountains of the Guiana Highlands take their name from a Pemon word for 'house of the gods'?

Tepuis are the remains of a vast sandstone plateau. Their summits are so cut off by sheer rock walls that they hold plants and animals found nowhere else in the world.

Which pre-Inca site near Lake Titicaca is famed for the Gateway of the Sun, carved from a single block of stone?

Tiwanaku grew powerful around the lake between AD 200 and 600, and its society seems to have collapsed around AD 1000. A long drought is one suspected cause.

What name is given to the wandering cattle horsemen who became folk heroes of the Argentine and Uruguayan plains?

Gauchos were migratory horsemen of the 18th and 19th centuries, reputed to be brave and unruly. A hugely popular epic poem of 1872 fixed the figure in the national imagination.

Which Andean crop, called 'mother of all grains' by the Incas, had 2013 declared its International Year by the UN?

Quinoa is not a true grain at all but a pseudocereal related to spinach. It thrives at high elevations, and its seeds are unusually rich in protein.

Which off-road endurance race left Africa over security fears and was held in South America from 2009 to 2019?

Dakar Rally organisers cancelled the 2008 race after security threats in Mauritania. The event kept its name through eleven editions an ocean away, then moved to Saudi Arabia in 2020.