Wanderlust World Wanderlust World Occupying nearly half of South America's landmass, Brazil shares borders with every country on the continent except Chile and Ecuador. Its vast territory stretches from the equatorial Amazon rainforest in the north to the subtropical pampas of Rio Grande do Sul in the south. Bordered by Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana, Brazil's 3.2 million square miles make it the world's fifth-largest country by area.
In striking contrast, Chile unfurls as a slender 2,650-mile (4,270 km) strip along the southwestern coast, averaging just 110 miles (177 km) in width. Hemmed by the Andes to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west, it borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and faces the Drake Passage to the south. This extreme geography—from the hyper-arid Atacama Desert to the glacial fjords of Patagonia—makes Chile the world's longest north-south country and the eighth-largest in the Americas.
Despite their vastly different shapes, both nations anchor South America's geographic and economic extremes. Brazil's interior vastness and Chile's coastal elongation together frame the continent's incredible diversity—from Amazonian basins to Andean peaks, from tropical wetlands to polar tundra.