Chile

Quick facts

How to spot Chile from satellite imagery

Chile is one of the most geometrically extreme countries on Earth. It stretches 4,300 kilometres from the Peruvian border in the north to Cape Horn in the south — longer than the distance from New York to Los Angeles — but its average width is only 175 kilometres. The country is pinned between the Andes on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west, with no room to spread sideways. The result is one of the most climate-diverse single countries on the planet, spanning from the driest non-polar desert (Atacama) in the north through Mediterranean central Chile, temperate rainforest in the south, and finally glaciated fjord country at the southern tip.

For geography games, Chile is one of the easier South American countries to learn because each of its four main climate zones has a distinctive aerial signature, and the country covers a large enough area to appear often in any global rotation. This guide walks through the cues that lock Chile in fast and tell you which zone you have landed in.

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