South America: Land & Water Think quick: Where is the highest airport in the world? Answer: it’s El Alto airport, located in La Paz, Bolivia - more than 13,000 feet up in the Andes Mountains. Bolivia is a landlocked country in South America, a continent that is part of a region called Latin America

Why Latin America? About 500 years ago, Europeans, like Christopher Columbus, sailed to the Americas. Most of the people who settled in what is now called Latin America came from Spain and Portugal. The languages from these countries have their roots in the ancient European language of Latin.

The Andes The Andes Mountains are perhaps South America’s most impressive physical feature. It runs about 5,500 miles along the continent’s western coast. Except for the Himalayan Mountains in Asia, the Andes are the highest mountains in the world - with some rising more than 20,000 feet.

More Landforms Another remarkable physical feature of South America is the pampas, a large region of flat grasslands that stretches through Argentina and Uruguay. The pampas are similar to the Great Plains of the United States.

The Amazon Basin & Rain Forest The Amazon River Basin contains the largest tropical rain forest in the world. A rain forest is a dense evergreen forest that has abundant rainfall throughout the year. This rain forest covers more than a third of all South America.

The World’s 2nd Longest River As the second longest of the world’s rivers, the Amazon flows 4,000 miles from Peru to Brazil to the Atlantic Ocean. It carries about 20% of all fresh water on Earth. The Amazon receives water from more than 1,000 tributaries that spill into it. Tributaries are rivers and streams that flow into a larger river.

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