Telling neighbours apart: South America

Published 4 November 2026 · 10 min read

South America has twelve countries in Far Fetched, and at first glance many of them look alike: Spanish on the signs, yellow diamond warning signs and a lot of green. But the continent runs from the Caribbean coast down towards Antarctica, and from sea level up to some of the highest towns on Earth. Once you know what to look for, the language, the land and the buildings narrow things down quickly. This guide works through the clues in the order that saves the most time.

Start with language and driving side

Two quick checks split the continent into four groups. Which language is on the signs, and which side of the road are the cars on?

• Portuguese, driving on the right: Brazil, and only Brazil. It is the only Portuguese-speaking country in South America, and it covers almost half of the continent.
• English, driving on the left: Guyana.
• Dutch, driving on the left: Suriname.
• Spanish, driving on the right: the other nine, which are Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The driving side is the fastest test of all. If traffic keeps to the left anywhere in South America, you are in Guyana or Suriname, and one word on a sign tells you which: "Street" and "Road" mean Guyana, while "straat" and "weg" mean Suriname. Both sit on the flat, humid north-east coast, so the landscape alone won't separate them. There's more about why some countries keep left in Which side of the road?

Portuguese or Spanish? Reading the signs

Spanish and Portuguese are close cousins, and many words look nearly the same. The quickest way to tell them apart is by their letters. Spanish uses ñ (as in "año"), the double ll (as in "calle") and accents such as á and ó. Portuguese never uses ñ: it writes the same sound as nh, and it has letters Spanish lacks, such as ã and õ with a wavy tilde and ç with a little tail. The ending "-ção", as in "informação", is about as Portuguese as it gets; Spanish writes "-ción" instead.

Some everyday words are completely different, which makes them reliable:

Be careful with words the two languages share. "Avenida" appears in both, and stop signs in most of South America say "PARE", which is a real word in Spanish and in Portuguese. "Farmacia" (Spanish) and "farmácia" (Portuguese) differ only by an accent, so look closely before you decide. For a wider look at letters and accents, see How to read the world's alphabets.

In Paraguay you may also see Guarani, an official language alongside Spanish. Guarani spelling stands out: it puts a tilde on vowels that Spanish never marks, including ỹ, and uses an apostrophe-like mark inside words. Many place names there begin with "Y" or "Ita", as in Ypacaraí and Itauguá. Guarani and the related Tupi language have also left place names across southern Brazil and north-east Argentina, so a single name is a hint rather than proof.

The main landscape zones

South America's landscapes follow a pattern that is easy to remember. The Andes run down the whole western side, from Venezuela and Colombia to the southern tip of Chile and Argentina. West of them lies a narrow Pacific strip; east of them stretch huge lowlands of rainforest, savanna and grassland. Travelling from north to south changes the picture again, from tropical heat to the cool, windy far south.

The Andes and the Altiplano

The Andes look different depending on where you are. In Colombia and Ecuador they are steep and green, with small fields climbing the slopes. Further south, in Peru and Bolivia, the mountains spread around the Altiplano, a high, flat and open landscape of dry yellow grass, wide skies and very few trees. Llamas and alpacas grazing by the road are a good hint for Bolivia or southern Peru, though they also live in the far north of Chile and Argentina.

The Pacific deserts

The coast of Peru is desert, and so is northern Chile, where the Atacama is one of the driest places in the world. Bare brown and grey hills, no grass, dusty towns and the ocean close by add up to one of these two countries. Language won't help, so look at the towns: Peru's coastal towns are busy with three-wheeled motorcycle taxis and flat-roofed brick houses, while northern Chile tends to be emptier, with long stretches of road between settlements.

The pampas and Patagonia

In the south-east, the land flattens into the pampas: wide grassland and farmland reaching to the horizon in Argentina, continuing into Uruguay and southern Brazil. Long straight roads, cattle, wire fences and lines of trees planted as windbreaks are typical. Further south, Patagonia is much drier, especially on the Argentine side: tough low bushes, yellow-brown grass, strong winds and almost no trees. The Chilean side of Patagonia is wetter, with forests, lakes and fjords.

Rainforest, savanna and red soil

Rainforest covers much of northern Brazil and the lowlands of its neighbours, from Peru and Bolivia to Guyana and Suriname. Few roads cross the deep forest, so the countryside you meet is usually farmland edged with tall trees. In central Brazil, the cerrado is a savanna of grass and small, twisted trees. Across much of Brazil, eastern Paraguay and north-east Argentina, the soil is a striking red or orange, most obvious on dirt roads and building sites. In southern Brazil, look for the araucaria, a tall pine-like tree whose branches curve up like a candelabra.

Climate: latitude and altitude

Near the equator, height matters more than distance from the equator. In Colombia, Ecuador and Peru you can drive from hot, humid lowlands with banana plants and palms, up through mild valleys with eucalyptus and fields, to cold, treeless heights in a single day. In the high, wet grasslands of the northern Andes, called páramo, look for frailejones: odd plants with a rosette of fuzzy, silvery leaves on top of a trunk. They grow in Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, so seeing them puts you high in the northern Andes.

Further south, distance from the equator takes over. Travelling down Chile and Argentina you leave the tropics, pass a mild central zone with vineyards and orchards (central Chile has a climate much like the Mediterranean), and reach the cool, cloudy and windy far south. In this southern part of the continent, well outside the tropics, the midday sun is always in the northern part of the sky. Closer to the equator it climbs high overhead and can be on either side, depending on the season. Reading landscapes explains the sun trick in more detail.

Telling the Spanish-speaking countries apart

Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay

Argentina is huge, so it has deserts, mountains and grassland. Its most common scene, though, is flat: long straight roads across the pampas, low houses with flat roofs, and in western provinces the Andes on the skyline. Uruguay is smaller and gentler, with rolling green grassland, cattle and plenty of eucalyptus trees, and no high mountains anywhere. Paraguay is flat and often greener and warmer, with red dirt roads in the east, dry thorny scrub in the western region called the Chaco, and the Guarani words described above.

Chile

Chile is long and narrow, so you are never far from either the ocean or the mountains, and the Andes are a frequent backdrop, often snow-capped. The north is desert, the middle has vineyards and dry hills, and the south is green and rainy, with lakes, volcanoes and wooden houses with metal roofs. Many place names in southern Chile, and in the neighbouring part of Argentina, come from Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche people, giving names such as Llanquihue and Panguipulli that look quite unlike Spanish.

Bolivia and Peru

Bolivia and Peru share the Altiplano and Lake Titicaca. In both, Spanish is joined by Indigenous languages such as Quechua and Aymara, and many place names come from Quechua. Name endings like "-pampa" and "-bamba", as in Cochabamba and Urubamba, are typical of the Andean countries. Peru has a desert coast, while Bolivia has no coast at all. In both, houses are often built of adobe or red brick, sometimes with an upper floor still to come.

Ecuador and Colombia

Ecuador is small but varied: a Pacific coast with banana plantations, a central line of snow-capped volcanoes, and rainforest to the east. Its highland valleys are patchworks of small fields. Colombia has three parallel ranges of the Andes, with very green, steep hillsides, coffee farms, brick houses and lots of motorbikes. Colombian cities number their streets on a grid: a "Calle" runs one way and a "Carrera" crosses it, so addresses look like "Calle 10 # 5-20". "Carrera" or its short form "Cra." on a street sign is a strong hint for Colombia, though a few cities in western Venezuela use a similar system.

Venezuela

Venezuela has a long Caribbean coastline, the northern end of the Andes in the west, and wide tropical grasslands called the llanos, which it shares with Colombia. In the far south-east rise the tepuis, flat-topped mountains with sheer cliff sides. Towns are often built of concrete and brick, with plenty of tropical greenery around them.

Roads and buildings across the continent

Yellow centre lines are used across much of South America, so a yellow line rarely separates neighbours. Brazil, for example, uses yellow lines between opposing lanes and white lines along the edges, but so do many of its neighbours, and white centre lines also turn up on some roads. Treat line colour as a supporting clue only; Road lines around the world gives the bigger picture. Warning signs are usually yellow diamonds, as in North America, so read the words on them rather than relying on their shape.

Buildings are often more useful. In Brazil, many houses sit behind solid walls with a gate, painted in bright or pale colours and topped with terracotta tiles. In the Andean countries, adobe and red brick are common, and houses are often built in stages, with steel rods left on the roof ready for the next floor. Southern Chile has many wooden houses, and the island of Chiloé is known for houses covered in wooden shingles and for its wooden churches. In Guyana, wooden houses often stand on stilts on the flat coastal plain, and Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname, has a historic centre of wooden buildings. Architecture as a clue covers buildings around the world.

Quick comparison table

Scoring: why neighbours are worth knowing

In Far Fetched, the right country earns 3 points, a country that shares a land border with it earns 2, and another country in the same sub-region earns 1. All twelve countries in this guide are in the South America sub-region, so once you are sure of the continent, any South American guess earns at least 1 point. In Survival mode, where a 1- or 2-point answer keeps your lives safe, that is very handy.

Borders turn near-misses into 2 points. Brazil borders every South American country in the game except Chile and Ecuador. Ecuador borders only Colombia and Peru, and Uruguay borders only Argentina and Brazil. So if you are torn between two countries that share a border, such as Argentina and Uruguay, Peru and Bolivia, or Colombia and Ecuador, either answer earns at least 2. Colombia also borders Panama, so guessing Panama in Colombia scores 2 as well.

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