South America
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99 free South America trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
44 free South America trivia questions with answers. South America is a continent of superlatives, and this quiz leans into them: the river that carries a fifth of the world's freshwater to the sea and has never been bridged, the tallest waterfall, the driest desert, the highest capital city, the biggest salt flat, the longest mountain range. Around a third of the questions are about the Amazon alone, from the trees and insects it holds to the Saharan dust that fertilises it and the conquistador who gave it a name from Greek myth. The rest ranges across all twelve countries: capitals and languages (why one country speaks Dutch and another Guarani), history from the Inca to Bolívar, wildlife from capybaras to anacondas, and culture from tango and Carnival to the first World Cup. Easy openers for a geography class sit beside questions that will slow down a seasoned traveller. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, and the citation sits under each explanation.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many sovereign countries are there in South America?
12
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.
Q 02The Amazon River carries roughly what share of all the river water flowing into the world's oceans?
One-fifth
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.
Q 03The Amazon rainforest gets its name from Francisco de Orellana, who borrowed it from what?
The female warriors of Greek myth
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.
Q 04What percentage of the Amazon rainforest lies within Brazil?
About 60%
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.
Q 05The Amazon rainforest spans the territory of how many nations?
Nine
Nine: eight sovereign states plus French Guiana, which is an overseas region of France rather than an independent country.
Q 06Roughly how many individual trees are estimated to stand in the Amazon rainforest?
390 billion
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.
Q 07Over half the dust fertilising the Amazon comes from one depression in which desert?
The Sahara
The Sahara's Bodélé Depression in northern Chad, the dried bed of an ancient lake, sends phosphorus-rich dust across the Atlantic every year.
Q 08About how many insect species live in the Amazon rainforest?
2.5 million
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.
Q 09Which is the largest city in the Amazon basin?
Manaus
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.
Q 10The Amazon represents roughly what share of the rainforest remaining on Earth?
Over half
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.
Q 11The Amazon River rises in the Andes of which country?
Peru
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.
Q 12What distinction do the Andes hold among the world's mountain ranges?
The longest continental mountain range in the world
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.
Q 13Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas, is in which country?
Argentina
Q 21Easter Island, home to nearly 1,000 moai statues, has belonged to which country since 1888?
Chile
The Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen named it on Easter Sunday 1722. The nearest inhabited land is Pitcairn Island, more than 2,000 km away.
Q 22The Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is the largest of what in the world?
Salt flat
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.
Q 23The Iguazu Falls, the world's largest waterfall system, sit on the border between which two countries?
Argentina and Brazil
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.
Q 14Angel Falls, the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall at 979 metres, is in which country?
Venezuela
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.
Q 15What has the lifeless soil of the Atacama Desert been used for?
Testing instruments for Mars missions
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.
Q 16Lake Titicaca, often called the world's highest navigable lake, sits on the border of which two countries?
Bolivia and Peru
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.
Q 17The Uros people of Lake Titicaca live on floating islands made from what?
Layers of totora reed
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.
Q 18Machu Picchu is believed to have been built around 1450 as an estate for which Inca emperor?
Pachacuti
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.
Q 19The Galápagos Islands, which Darwin visited aboard HMS Beagle in 1835, belong to which country?
Ecuador
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.
Q 20The Galápagos Islands are named after which animal?
The giant tortoise
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.
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!'
Q 24Simón Bolívar, 'El Libertador', was born in 1783 in which city?
Caracas
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.
Q 25Which is the only independent country outside Europe where Dutch is the official language?
Suriname
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.
Q 26Which is the only country in mainland South America with English as its official language?
Guyana
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.
Q 27In which South American country do over 90% of people speak Guarani alongside Spanish?
Paraguay
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.
Q 28Which Colombian city is nicknamed the 'City of Eternal Spring' for its mild climate?
Medellín
Medellín sits at about 1,500 metres in the Aburrá Valley, which keeps temperatures mild all year; it is Colombia's second-largest city.
Q 29Brasília, Brazil's purpose-built capital, was inaugurated in which year?
1960
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.
Q 30At roughly 3,650 metres, which city is the highest administrative capital in the world?
La Paz
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.