*Latin America area covers 7,930,845 square miles, or about 16% of the Earth’s surface (or just over 4% of the total surface area of the Earth).  Its largest country, Brazil, is the world’s 5th largest country, and its major river, the Amazon, is the world’s second longest and carries more water than all the other top four rivers combined.

*Mexico, the third largest country in the region, is mostly highland, and is relatively dry (thanks to the rain shadow effect).  Mexico has four major landforms:  Baja California, the Sierra Madre (divided into the Sierra Madre Occidental, Sierra Madre Oriental, and Sierra Madre del Sur), the Mexican Plateau in the midst of the Sierra Madre, and the Yucatan Peninsula.

*South of Mexico, Central America has always been interesting because it looked like a good short cut to sailors.  Before the 20th century, people seeking to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans had to sail all the way around South America’s Cape Horn, either through the Straits of Magellan or around Drake’s Passage.

*People considered digging a canal through either Nicaragua or Panama—if they had used Nicaragua, they would have dug a canal to Lake Nicaragua (the largest lake in Central America), then another one away from it.  Instead, it was dug through the Isthmus of Panama.  Work began in 1882, and was not completed until 1914, although most of the work was done in the last 10-11 years of that period by Americans.

*The United States controlled the Canal Zone until 1999, when it was given back to Panama (in part because US ships wouldn’t fit through it).  Today people are again considering building canals through Nicaragua, Mexico, or Columbia.

*There are some volcanoes in the region, and some of them are still active.  Most of them form Caribbean islands, and volcanic activity is occasionally a danger to the people on some of them.  This is due to the presence of the Caribbean Plate beneath much of the Caribbean Sea and Central America south of Mexico.

*The Caribbean is divided into two major groups of islands, the Greater Antilles and the Lesser Antilles. 

*South America’s physical geography is dominated by the Andes Mountains.  This mountain range runs from Venezuela to the southern tip of Chile and Argentina, and may even be part of a vast mountain range system running from the Alaskan Rockies, through the Sierra Madre and the Andes down to the Antarctic peninsula of Palmerland.

*The Andes alone stretch 4,500 miles, making them the world’s longest mountain range.  The ranges within the Andes, or sometimes all the Andes (and even their associated mountains) are sometimes known as the cordillera, a Spanish word meaning ‘little cord,’ but typically referring to a major mountain range—usually the main mountain range of a country or region.

*The Andes were created principally by tectonic action, as the Nazca Plate (next to the Pacific Plate) is subducted under the South American Plate.

*Mount Acongura in Chile is the highest mountain in the Andes (and in the Americas—indeed, the highest peak outside of Asia).  It is 22,834 feet high.

*The Andes also contain Angel Falls, the highest free-falling waterfall in the world (located in Venezuela):  the water drops 2,647 feet.

*Near their centre, the Andes surround a vast plateau called the altiplano (high plain).  This lies within Bolivia and Peru, and contains Lake Titicaca, the largest lake in South America and the highest commercially navigable lake in the world.

*Just southwest of the Altiplano is the Atacama Desert, a region so dry that some areas have never recorded any rainfall since records were first kept.  It is the driest desert in the world, suffering badly from the rain shadow effect—it has coastal mountains on one side and the main range of the Andes on the other.

*The Southern Andes have a lower, steppe climate plateau called Patagonia; it is mostly in Argentina.

*Other highlands in South America include the Guyana Highlands around the southern parts of the Guyanas, and the Mato Grosso (Thick Jungle) Plateau in southern Brazil and neighbouring countries.

*Central and especially South America also have lowland areas.  The largest are the Llanos of Colombia and Venezuela, and the pampas of Argentia and Uruguay.  Both are major ranching areas, especially for beef cattle. 

*Most major rivers in the area are in South America, but the Rio Grande on the US-Mexico border is also significant, both for its size and for its cultural significance as the boundary between the two nations.

*The most impressive river in South America (and possibly the World) is the Amazon.  It is the 2nd longest river in the world, and is very wide.  At the mouth, it is so wide it is impossible to see the other side (the mouth is 160 miles across (Tennessee, at 121 miles across, would fit right in)).  It remains navigable by major ocean-going ships for almost 800 miles from the mouth, often being up to six miles wide along the way.

*Another major river is the River Plate, or Rio de la Plata (River of Silver).  It is hardly a river at all in its own right, but is the place where the Párana, Paraguay, and Uruguay Rivers run together, and flow to the sea.  Buenos Aires (Argentina’s capital) and Montevideo (Uruguay’s capital) lie across this estuary from one another.

*Latin America has a wide range of climatic regions, from the tropical islands to the glaciers of the Andes.

*Most of the region is tropical, meaning it is hot pretty much all year around; some is tropical rainforest, particularly in the Amazon Basin, but much is also tropical savannah, which, though hot and sometimes wet, receives most of its rainfall in a fairly short space of time, and is usually dry, and is often used for grazing.

*The northern part of the Southern Cone is humid subtropical, and the lower part is mostly desert and steppe (Patagonia), thanks to the rain shadow effect of the Andes.

*The rain shadow effect does not heavily influence the Amazon Basin due to evaporation from the river (fed by melt water and spring water) and transpiration from the rain forests.

*There is some Marine West Coast climate, particularly in southern Chile.

*The main determinant of climate, though, is often not latitude, but altitude.  In South America, many places in the tropics are so high up that they are cold.

*There are three temperature regions based on altitude:  tierra caliente (hot land) below 2,500 feet, terra templada (temperate land) between 2,500 and 6,500 feet, and terra fria (cold land) between 6,500 and 10,000 feet.

*Terra calienta is good for bananas, rice, sugar, and cacao (for chocolate).

*Terra templada is good for coffee and corn (and coca, of which Coca-Cola buys 115 tons a year for its secret formula).  Coca can still be legally grown in parts of the Andes, especially in Bolivia.

*Terra fria is cold most of the year, but potatoes and barley can be grown there.

*Above terra fria it is to cold to do much of anything.