Talk:South America

This page has content translated from its Portuguese version based on work by Evan Prodromou, and Wikivoyage users Episteme, Rmx and Pmichelazzo as well as anonymous users. (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 21:38, 18 August 2006 (EDT)

Groupings

Isn't it way too much countries? I think it's better if we'd come up with some logical regions in South America. Like:

- Andean states (Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia)
- Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay)
- The Guianas (Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana)
- Brazil

(WT-en) Globe-trotter 15:30, 21 December 2008 (EST)

I think this is a pretty good exception to our 9 rule, I don't see a need to do regions for South America, it's manageable as-is, and while it would be possible to do regions similar to what you suggest, they aren't really well known and I think would feel forced... unlike Asia where the regions really make sense and are known regions outside of our hierarchy – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 00:53, 22 December 2008 (EST)

I totally agree, let's leave it as-is. (WT-en) Globe-trotter 13:08, 24 December 2009 (EST)

Most of other WV have now grouped the countries into 4 sub-regions as suggested by Globe-trotter a few years back. Should we still stick to the current region-list and leave it as it is? --Saqib (talk) 22:58, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I've implemented it time ago on it:voy and also nl:voy use it. Considering the similarities of the countries within each reagion it make sense to create this layer between the continent and the countries. --Andyrom75 (talk) 23:01, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Leave well enough alone. 14 countries is not unmanageable and I shudder to think of the arguments as to where to stick the Falklands; what does it have in common with Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay? or is it going to be in a "region" by itself, like Brazil? --118.93nzp (talk) 23:16, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Falklands has a lot in common with Argentina... try to ask it to mr. Galtieri ;-) --Andyrom75 (talk) 19:19, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Cities

This one is a little trickier than the other destinations list, but nonetheless I only have two suggestions:

1. Drop Cuzco for La Paz, since we'll otherwise have three Peruvian destinations on top of each other (and because La Paz is both important and incredibly unique)
2. Drop Cartagena for Bogota, because the latter is both an interesting cosmopolitan city, and the third largest metropolis on the continent

I understand the rationale behind listing Cuzco and Cartagena, since they are both more alluring tourist destinations than my suggestions, but travel is much broader than tourism, and at the continental level I think we really need to just hit the biggest destinations (be it for business, study, backpacking, shopping, sightseeing, or whatever else). --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 13:20, 17 December 2009 (EST)

Certainly at the continental level there's a good argument for just picking the top nine destinations by pure numbers, as long as they aren't all clustered in one continental section. I was just noticing yesterday that North America could use some work; it doesn't list any cities at all. (WT-en) LtPowers 15:09, 17 December 2009 (EST)

I added a list here, to North America, and Central America, just to get the ball rolling on the talks. Switching those cities looks good. It seems much easier to represent more areas in South America, as opposed to some of the other regions. (WT-en) ChubbyWimbus 15:27, 17 December 2009 (EST)

Other destinations

Nice list! I'd only make one change, and that would be to add Iguaçu Falls. It's hard to say which should go to make room, but I'm tempted to suggest the Pantanal. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 13:20, 17 December 2009 (EST)

I'd remove Amazonia; it's just too large to be useful. (WT-en) LtPowers 15:10, 17 December 2009 (EST)

I agree with LtPowers. I think the same applies to the Andes, also way too large to really be considered a "destination". --(WT-en) Globe-trotter 16:39, 13 November 2011 (EST)

VFD Discussion

South America / North America

• Delete South America or North America is not a valid definition of continent. There are only five continents in the world. Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania. Some may consider Antartica another continent. However its mainly in the United States that this separation exists because of the co-mingling of the word America (referring to the United States itself) and the American continent. The United Nations, the Olympic Committee and other international organizations only recognize five continents.

The first page of Wikivoyage should reflect this definition.

I think they are useful travel regions. It's not relevant to travel whether they count as separate continents. --Peter ^Talk 05:41, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

• Strong Keep Wikivoyage uses the common definition of regions, even if the official one differs. Plus, North and South America are extremely different both geographically and culturally. Hawaiian Eskimo (talk) 05:44, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
• Obvious Keep Please pardon me for saying so, but the reasoning behind the argument to delete seems absurd to me. In no sense - neither geographic, political, historical, traditional, nor cultural - is there a single continent of "America." If anything, one could make a strong argument for a third continent of Central America, based on tectonic plates. But Central America is grouped more with North than South America. Nor, by the way, do I know of any geographer who questions Antarctica as a continent. You could make a much stronger argument for Eurasia being a continent, but we're not going to delete Europe, either. Tourists visit Europe, South America, Australia, etc. - all continents. And we would serve the traveler in what way be eliminating the articles about these continents?? Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:56, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
• Keep Do you also plan to delete Southern Africa and Northern Africa? In many cases, it is useful to have an article about a group of countries even if the group of countries might not officially count as a "continent". --Stefan2 (talk) 09:45, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
• Keep, obviously. They are logical groupings that travelers will recognize. Globe-trotter (talk) 18:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
• Keep - Not the travellers' concern whether they constitute actual continents or not. They are useful and often used distinctions. Texugo (talk) 01:33, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
• Keep: If Northern and Southern California have articles, so to should North and South America. Regardless of whether they are continents are not, they are well-known geographic distinctions. This isn't the proper place to discuss the merits of this being designated Purplebackpack89 04:33, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
  • "keep" while some country's schools teach a world model where there is only one American continent, most of the world sees N and S America as very different. Frankly, Central America is not seen as being in North America by most Canadians. JadeDragon (talk) 08:21, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Result: Speedy keep. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:54, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Do in Uraguay

I actually don't know much about Uraquay. Someone listed the following under 'do' but I'd rather not list them without any explanation what they are. Otherwise it is just a list of Spanish names. Even if I translate (East point, Point of the Devil, etc) it doesn't help.

Visit:

• Punta del Este
• Colonia del Sacramento
• La Pedrera
• Punta del Diablo
• Cabo Polonio
• Quebrada de los Cuervos

Can anyone elaborate? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:38, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't know anything about "Uraquay", Uruguay on the other hand... :)

Most of these are beach resorts (or rather plain villages with beaches), Quebrada de los Cuervos is a canyon landcape and Colonia is stepping right into the 17th century. ϒpsilon (talk) 05:47, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, and overall the Do section is an eyesore and has to be turned into prose. ϒpsilon (talk) 05:49, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I just nuked most of it, or rather, I weeded out all the things that do not actually qualify as Do activities anyway, and placed them below for possible re-incorporation into a more appropriate section (most of them are just See, Cities, or Other destinations items in disguise). At any rate, this section shouldn't be breaking things down by country; that just duplicates the Do section of each country here in a list. It should be giving the reader a best-of look at the continent as a whole, and it should probably be broken into broad topics like Adventure / Extreme sports / Festivals and the like, with a well-chosen 7±2 items in each subsection. Texugo (talk) 11:55, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Texugo. I think the way Europe looks might be a pointer as to where want this article to be going. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:39, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Europe is indeed our best (least worst) continent article even with the See section cut short and could be used as an example/model both for this and other continent articles. --ϒpsilon (talk) 18:44, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

---

Argentina

• See the end of the world in Patagonia
• Witness the Devils Throat at Iguazu Falls

Bolivia

• See one of the supposed birthplace of the Incas at Lake Titicaca, South Americas Largest Lake

Brazil

• Sail up the Amazon to Três Fronteiras on an old cargo boat near the tripoint where the borders of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia meet.
• Visit the Rio Carnival and its Favelas

Chile

• Take a break from civilization visiting the Chilean Patagonia
• Look at the universe through the world's clearest sky in the Atacama Desert

Colombia

• Visit the lost city of Tayrona
• Visit the old city of Cartagena
• Visit El Cocuy National Park
• Visit Gorgona Island

Ecuador

• Visit the Galapagos Islands
• Ride the roof of the Devils Nose Train from Riobamba (no longer possible)
• Visit the cloud forests in the valley of youth in Vilcabamba

French Guiana

• See a rocket launch at the European Space Agency's launch site in Kourou
• Visit the former French penal colony islands, Îles du Salut.

Guyana

• Buy gold jewelry and other locally made beautiful crafts.
• Travel along the rivers by speedboat.

Paraguay

• Enjoy the diverse cuisine with Native American influences
• Buy electronics and whatnot in Ciudad del Este
• Experience Mennonite culture in the town of Filadelfia.

Peru

• See the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu at sunrise
• Witness the glory of the Andes Mountains
• See the mysterious Nazca lines from air

Venezuela

• Visit Cumaná, the oldest city in America
• Visit Canaima, a natural UNESCO heritage park, with beautiful scenarios and the Angel falls, the longest waterfall in the world
• Go to Los Roques archipelago
• Visit Mérida, and hop on in the longest and highest cable car in the world; the Mérida's cable car

1-liner listings?

Should each country have a 1-liner listing? I guess my personal view is that each listing should be whatever length is most useful to the traveler; however, Wikivoyage:Continent article template suggests that 1-liner listings should be used:

==Regions==

This section is for listing any specific regions of a continent. For instance, Asia is divided into 6 areas (East Asia, Southeast Asia, etc) to make it easier to digest. List regions that make up the continent, with a brief one line description:

• Region A - A mountainous wonderland that will change your life
• Region B - warm beaches and slow lifestyle
• Region C - ancient castles and inspiring museums

If a continent is not divided into regions and only lists countries, rename this section "countries" and list only the countries.

So how do you all think we should proceed? Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:45, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't think we need an additional layer between the South America article and individual articles. The list of countries could be divided into subsections, though. --ϒpsilon (talk) 09:03, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it's essential for the continent to be divided into regions. What I'm wondering about is more whether to use 1-liner listings, or at least perhaps shorten some of them. One is 3 sentences long. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:09, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I can try to shorten some of them. ϒpsilon (talk) 10:40, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

We traditionally allow longer descriptions in one-liner listings, the higher up in the hierarchy an item is. In part this is because the regionlist template often looks better with longer descriptions. That said, I'm confused because all of these seem very short. I would suggest lengthening them, not shortening. Powers ^(talk) 01:44, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that. It would help if this were clarified at Wikivoyage:Continent article template and Wikivoyage:Region article template. Would you like to try your hand at clearer explanations there? Also the reason you're confused about the length is that ϒpsi already shortened the descriptions. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:13, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Well I may have overstated the case a bit. I can say that many existing articles use somewhat longer descriptions in the higher levels of the hierarchy; I don't know if there's a consensus that that's allowable or not. And in fact, just now, checking a few examples, they're actually shorter than I thought they were. Three sentences is probably too much, but two should be fine, especially if they can be spliced with a semicolon. =) Powers ^(talk) 13:20, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Semicolons are good. :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:55, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I also like semicolons; there are naysayers who say they look pretentious, however. Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:14, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Beisbol

I am no expert on "America's pastime", but I do know that a lot of MLB's greatest are either Latin Americans themselves or have Latin heritage. Now a lot of those are not from South America but from places like Puerto Rico, Mexico, Cuba, Mainland Central America or some minor islands. But isn't Beisbol also the most popular sport or at least a close second in some South American places? And if so shouldn't we say so here? And maybe create an article along the lines of Baseball in Latin America? Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:51, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Venezuela is a huge hotbed of baseball. It absolutely should be mentioned. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:52, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

May be the case in Northern South America. In the southern half fútbol is certainly the biggest sport. ϒpsilon (talk) 21:45, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Sure, Soccer is big in many parts of Latin America (and sadly sometimes displacing all other sports), but I am quite sure the "Soccer is the only thing" perception is simplistic. As evidenced by the Venezuelan or Nicaraguan or Cuban or Panamanian enthusiasm for Baseball... Is there another country in South America besides Venezuela that goes crazy for Baseball? Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:50, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Subdividing South America

Some other language versions subdivide South America into four parts; see nl:Zuid-Amerika#Landen_en_territoria, de:Südamerika, es:Sudamérica#Regiones, it:America_del_Sud#Le_macroregioni_sudamericane. What do you think? ϒpsilon (talk) 06:43, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Only the Dutch and the Italian have sub-regions, which are relatively empty pages. Do not see reason for adding an extra level unless there is common information that can be created on those pages. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:12, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

I like Vikryansaah (talk) 07:05, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

I am not in favor of such a change due to the following reasons:

1. Such a split up would be arbitrary, IMO.
2. The German and Spanish article are barley an example, because there is no further level underneath. They just separated the countries on this SA article. Or is this what you are proposing?
3. Such regions would not exhibit overly specific regional properties worth putting into a separate article.
4. WV already suffers from too many regions dimensions with many region article barely filled with any information or on the other hand a lot of duplicate information. No traveller will ever bother about reading all those numerous often generic region levels when travelling to a country, sadly.
5. Taking a look at the SA region article for NL and IT, I barely see any information there. What is the point of having such stumps lying around instead of a proper and readable single page?

Cheers Ceever (talk) 09:59, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

I thought about the issue again. I would support a separation of the countries at the top of the SA article according to the split up in the DE and SE article. However, let's keep the rest of the chapters compact and comprehensive instead of creating sub region stubs. Cheers Ceever (talk) 10:35, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Andes Transit site

Hi, everyone. A new user, User:Deebeltran, is adding the https://andestransit.com/ link to numerous articles about places in the Andes. This looks to be a listing service, not a primary link, in violation of Wikivoyage:External links#What not to link to, and it also has ads on it. I think we should remove it from any article about a city, but is there a ttfc justification for making an exception for it in articles about entire countries, such as Ecuador? Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:20, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

This looks like a bus aggregator. I tried a few destinations in South America that I've been to and it looks probably useful but not that reliable. I agree that it should not be linked in any city articles. I'd say add a link to it from Aggregators and probably nowhere else. —Granger (talk · contribs) 07:22, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your appraisal of the site. I've removed all mentions of it, so unless someone would like to argue in favor of listing it, this matter is probably now closed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:15, 24 May 2019 (UTC)