Andes Trivia
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59 free Andes trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
The Andes run 8,900 kilometres down the spine of South America through seven countries, and they hold the highest peak and highest volcano outside Asia, the highest capital city, the driest desert and the point on Earth farthest from its centre. This quiz covers the geography and geology: Aconcagua and Chimborazo, the Nazca Plate and the 1960 Valdivia earthquake, the Altiplano and its salt flats, snow lines and oroclines. It then covers what lives and happens there: condors with 3.3-metre wingspans, vicuñas and chinchillas, spectacled bears and cock-of-the-rock, quinine and potatoes, Potosí silver and Chilean copper, Pizarro's 180 men, Quechua and Aymara, the Uros reed islands, the mountaineers who first climbed the big peaks and the rugby team that survived 72 days after a 1972 plane crash. It suits travellers, geography students and quiz-night regulars. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Andes and their peaks, lakes, deserts and wildlife, and each question shows its supporting sentence after you answer.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01By which measure do the Andes beat every other mountain range on land?
Length
Length: the Andes run the whole western edge of South America, farther than any other range on land. Only the mid-ocean ridge on the sea floor forms a longer chain.
Q 02Which country holds the north-eastern end of the Andes, beyond Colombia?
Venezuela
Venezuela holds the range's north-eastern tail, the Sierra Nevada de Mérida, where the country's last glacier shrank so far that scientists reclassified it as an ice field in 2024.
Q 03What is the highest peak in the Andes, and in all the Americas?
Aconcagua
Aconcagua began as a volcano but fell silent long ago, so the highest point in the Western Hemisphere, just inside Argentina, is no longer counted as one.
Q 04Which Ecuadorian volcano's summit is the point on Earth's surface farthest from the planet's centre?
Chimborazo
Chimborazo sits about one degree from the equator, where Earth bulges outward, so its summit stands roughly 2 km farther from the planet's centre than Everest's.
Q 05What is the world's highest volcano, on the Chile-Argentina border?
Ojos del Salado
Ojos del Salado has no confirmed eruption in recorded history, yet fumaroles near its summit still vent volcanic gas.
Q 06The subduction of which tectonic plate beneath South America is the main cause of the Andes' rise?
Nazca
The Nazca Plate, a slab of Pacific sea floor, dives under South America's western edge, lifting the range and powering its earthquakes and volcanoes as it sinks.
Q 07Which Chilean city gives its name to the 1960 earthquake that is the strongest ever recorded?
Valdivia
Valdivia's 1960 earthquake reached magnitude 9.5, and its tsunami crossed the Pacific to cause destruction in Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines.
Q 08What name is given to the vast high plateau of the central Andes, most of it in Bolivia?
The Altiplano
The Altiplano is a run of enclosed basins between the two main Andean chains, so its rivers never reach the sea and the water pools in lakes or dries into salt flats.
Q 09On which lake do the Uros people live on floating islands built from totora reeds?
Titicaca
Titicaca's Uros build with totora twice over: the islands are thick mats of the dried reed, and bundles of the same reed are lashed together into their boats.
Q 10Which seat of government, about 3,650 m up in the Andes, is the world's highest national capital?
La Paz
La Paz fills a deep canyon cut into the surrounding high plain, which shelters it from the cold winds above; Bolivia's constitutional capital is lower-lying Sucre.
Q 11Which city, spread over a high plain about 2,640 m up, is the largest in the Andes?
Bogotá
Bogotá began as a Spanish town founded in 1538 by the conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, who had climbed into the Andes and conquered the Muisca people of the high plain.
Q 12Which metal comes out of Chuquicamata and Escondida, the giant mines of Chile's northern desert?
Copper
Copper ore formed along the western Andes where hot fluids rose from cooling magma, and in 2024 Chile still mined more of it than any other country.
Q 13Which Bolivian salt flat, the largest on Earth, sits on brine that holds vast quantities of lithium?
Salar de Uyuni
Salar de Uyuni is so large, flat and bright that satellite sensors are calibrated against it, and a thin film of rain turns the whole surface into a mirror.
Q 21Which two camel relatives did Andean peoples domesticate for carrying loads and for fleece?
The llama and the alpaca
The llama and the alpaca split the work: the big llama is first of all a pack animal, the smaller alpaca is kept for its fleece, and both spit when annoyed.
Q 22Which soft-furred rodents of the Andes were hunted almost to extinction for their pelts?
Chinchillas
Chinchillas were hunted almost to extinction for their thick, velvet-soft fur, and while they are still scarce in the wild they are now bred in captivity and sold as house pets.
Q 23Which large threatened mammal shares the Andean cloud forests with mountain tapirs?
The spectacled bear
Q 14Which Bolivian mountain city boomed on silver dug from Cerro Rico, the 'rich hill' that rises above it?
Potosí
Potosí sprang up after silver was found on Cerro Rico in 1545, and the hill is still honeycombed with mine workings from its summit down.
Q 15The Andean tree Cinchona is the original source of which drug?
Quinine
Quinine from cinchona bark was for centuries the only effective treatment for malaria, so prized that Dutch and British collectors smuggled the tree's seeds out to plantations in Asia.
Q 16Which staple crop was first domesticated in the Andes, where thousands of native varieties are still grown?
The potato
The potato was first domesticated in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia, and Spanish ships carried it to Europe in the 16th century, where it became a staple a world away from home.
Q 17The tropical Andes hold a greater variety of which animals than any other region on Earth?
Amphibians
Amphibians are more varied here than anywhere else, and most of the region's frogs live nowhere else, among them marsupial frogs whose females carry their eggs in a pouch on the back.
Q 18How does the Andean condor, one of the world's largest flying birds, stay airborne for hours at a time?
Riding rising air
Riding rising air off warm ground and windy slopes lets a bird that can weigh 15 kg glide for hours with barely a wingbeat: one condor carrying a flight recorder flew for more than five hours without a single flap.
Q 19The Andean condor is what kind of bird?
A vulture
A vulture, the condor lives mainly on carrion rather than hunting, and its featherless head stays cleaner when it is buried in a carcass.
Q 20Which wild Andean camelid produces some of the finest and most expensive wool in the world?
The vicuña
The vicuña is still rounded up from the wild, sheared and released, much as it was under the Inca, who reserved its fleece for their nobility, and each animal gives only a little wool.
The spectacled bear is South America's only bear, and it builds stick platforms in the branches to reach food and to sleep.
Q 24Which conquistador seized the Inca emperor Atahualpa at Cajamarca in 1532 with fewer than 200 men?
Francisco Pizarro
Francisco Pizarro ambushed the emperor's escort and took him prisoner, accepted a room filled with treasure as ransom, and then had Atahualpa executed anyway.
Q 25Which Inca site, perched on a saddle above the Urubamba valley, did Hiram Bingham bring to world attention in 1911?
Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu was no secret to the people living below it, and it was a local farmer, Melchor Arteaga, who led Bingham up to the ruins that made him famous.
Q 26What are the two main surviving language families of the Andean peoples?
Quechua and Aymara
Quechua and Aymara are the living voices of the highlands: the Inca made Quechua the language of their empire, and it has long outlived that empire, still spoken by millions today.
Q 27The word cordillera, used for the Andean chains, comes from a Spanish word meaning what?
Rope
Rope is the root: cordillera grew from the old Spanish cordilla, a little cuerda or cord, which suits a range that looks like peaks strung along a line.
Q 28Which desert on the Andes' western flank is the driest non-polar desert on Earth?
The Atacama
The Atacama stays dry because the Andes block moist air from the east while the cold current offshore chills the sea air, so the coast gets fog and low cloud but almost no rain.
Q 29Why has NASA-style research been done in the Yungay area of Chile's northern desert?
Its soil resembles that of Mars
In 2003 researchers repeated the Viking landers' life-detection tests on Yungay soil and found nothing.
Q 30The 1897 expedition that first climbed the Americas' highest peak put which of its members on the summit first?
The mountain guide
The mountain guide, Matthias Zurbriggen of Switzerland, reached the top alone, while expedition leader Edward FitzGerald turned back on every one of his own attempts.