49 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.