Fun fact#150
Greenland's ice is kilometres thick
The Greenland ice sheet averages about 1.5 kilometres thick and presses the island's bedrock down below sea level in places.
The Americas: 189 stories, quotes and facts
Ten thousand kilometres of mountain spine, from Arctic ferries to Patagonian wind.
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Ten thousand kilometres of mountain spine, from Arctic ferries to Patagonian wind.
Countries on this page
Every country page collects its entries in one place, with a fact sheet and the guides for going there.
Entries on this page
Story#152
The stone that fit exactly
Our guide slid a bank card at a joint in the Inca wall and it would not enter. He did this for tourists twenty times a day, and it still made everyone go quiet.
Fun fact#592
Canada has the longest coastline
Canada's coastline runs over 200,000 kilometres, longer than the next ten countries combined thanks to its Arctic islands.
Quote#123
The mountains are calling
The mountains are calling and I must go.
Story#665
Night dive with manta rays
We knelt on the sand with torches pointed up. Plankton gathered in the light and the mantas came to eat, rolling over us, close enough to feel the water move.
Fun fact#595
Canada holds most of the world's lakes
Canada contains more lake area than the rest of the world put together, with over two million lakes.
Fun fact#596
Newfoundland has its own time zone
Newfoundland runs half an hour ahead of Atlantic time, a 30-minute offset kept since 1935.
Story#669
Volcano road closed
The road ended in black rock that had not been there two years before. A sign asked us not to take any lava home, which is apparently both disrespectful and unlucky.
Fun fact#599
Churchill is the polar bear capital
Bears gather near Churchill each autumn waiting for Hudson Bay to freeze, and the town leaves cars unlocked as bear shelters.
Story#672
Snow on the Icefields Parkway
It snowed in June. We pulled into a viewpoint, three other cars did the same, and six strangers stood in a line watching a glacier disappear behind cloud without saying anything.
Fun fact#600
Quebec keeps French alive
Quebec's language laws protect French in commerce and signage, and it is the only province where French is the sole official language.
Quote#127
In every walk with nature
In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
Fun fact#602
The Rockies have a spiral tunnel
Two figure-eight tunnels were bored into the mountains in 1909 to reduce a dangerously steep railway grade.
Story#676
Bear bell arithmetic
We were told to make noise. After two hours of singing badly we stopped, and thirty seconds later a black bear crossed the trail ahead. We resumed singing immediately.
Fun fact#604
Canada's national park is bigger than Switzerland
Wood Buffalo National Park covers about 44,800 square kilometres, larger than Switzerland.
Story#679
The tide at Fundy
We walked on the sea floor in the morning and kayaked over the same spot after lunch. Sixteen metres of water arrived while we ate.
Fun fact#606
Alaska is the widest state
Alaska crosses the 180th meridian, making it both the westernmost and easternmost state in the United States.
Story#682
Poutine at two in the morning
Minus twenty outside and a queue out the door. The man in front of us explained that the cheese must squeak, and that anything else is not poutine but a tragedy.
Fun fact#608
Denali is taller from base to peak than Everest
Measured from its own base, Denali rises higher than Everest does above the Tibetan plateau.
Fun fact#610
Yellowstone sits on a supervolcano
Yellowstone's caldera is roughly 55 by 72 kilometres, and its heat drives more than half the world's geysers.
Story#686
Northern lights over the highway
The driver pulled over without warning and turned off the headlights. Green went across the whole sky in about four seconds and then rearranged itself for an hour.
Quote#133
Climb the mountains
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
Fun fact#612
Yellowstone was the first national park
Established in 1872, Yellowstone is generally recognised as the first national park anywhere in the world.
Story#690
The ferry through the fjords
The state ferry takes three days and you sleep in a tent taped to the deck. It costs less than a flight and you see four hundred kilometres of coastline nobody photographs.
Fun fact#614
The Grand Canyon exposes two billion years
Rock at the canyon floor is nearly two billion years old, roughly half the age of the Earth.
Fun fact#616
Death Valley holds the heat record
A reading of 56.7 degrees Celsius in 1913 remains the highest reliably recorded air temperature on Earth.
Story#692
Grand Canyon at the wrong rim
We drove to the North Rim by accident, found eleven cars in the car park instead of a thousand, and had a viewpoint to ourselves for forty minutes.
Fun fact#618
Death Valley's rocks move by themselves
Stones leave long trails across the playa, pushed by thin ice sheets breaking up in light wind.
Story#696
Descending is harder
Everyone warns you that going down is easy. On the way back up, in the last mile, a ranger handed out salt tablets and said the same sentence to every single person.
Fun fact#620
Route 66 no longer officially exists
Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, but much of it survives as Historic Route 66 signed by individual states.
Quote#137
Going out was going in
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
Fun fact#622
New York has more languages than any city
Researchers have identified over 700 languages spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city ever recorded.
Story#700
Diner coffee refill
The waitress topped up the cup four times without being asked and called everyone honey. The pie was better than any restaurant we ate at that month.
Fun fact#624
The Statue of Liberty was a gift and a kit
France gave the statue, which arrived in 350 pieces packed in 214 crates and was assembled on site.
Story#704
A town of eleven people
The sign said population 11. The bar was open, the man behind it was also the postmaster, and he knew exactly where we were headed before we said it.
Fun fact#626
Central Park is entirely designed
Every hill, lake and outcrop arrangement in Central Park was landscaped. Almost nothing there is natural.
Fun fact#628
Chicago reversed a river
Engineers reversed the flow of the Chicago River in 1900 so sewage would drain away from Lake Michigan.
Story#706
Route 66 remains
Half the towns on the old road are closed and half are museums about being closed. One motel owner has been repainting the same neon sign for thirty years.
Quote#183
Take only memories
Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints, kill nothing but time.
Fun fact#630
San Francisco's fog has a name
Locals call the summer fog Karl, and it has its own devoted social media following.
Story#710
Yosemite in the dark
We hiked out under a full moon without torches because the granite reflected enough light. A ranger told us afterwards that this was either wonderful or irresponsible.
Fun fact#632
Hawaii is the youngest US state and still growing
Kilauea keeps adding land to the Big Island, and a new seamount is forming offshore for a future island.
Fun fact#634
Hawaii has almost every climate zone
The Big Island contains most of the world's recognised climate zones, from tropical beach to alpine tundra.
Story#714
Fog rolling into the bay
It came over the hill like water going down a drain in reverse. Ten minutes later the bridge was gone and it was ten degrees colder.
Fun fact#636
Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain from base
Measured from the seafloor, Mauna Kea rises over 10,000 metres, taller than Everest above sea level.
Story#716
Getting off at the wrong stop
We got out at 125th instead of 116th and ended up eating the best food of the trip while waiting for the next train, which we deliberately missed twice.
Fun fact#638
Louisiana uses parishes
Louisiana is the only state divided into parishes rather than counties, a leftover from its French and Spanish past.
Quote#248
The road is life
Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.
Fun fact#640
New Orleans buries above ground
High groundwater made underground burial impractical, so the city built tombs above ground in walled cemeteries.
Story#720
Bluegrass on a porch
Four people, four instruments, no sheet music and no audience except us and a dog. It went on for two hours and nobody announced a single song title.
Fun fact#642
Alaska was bought for two cents an acre
The United States paid Russia 7.2 million dollars for Alaska in 1867, mocked at the time as Seward's Folly.
Story#724
Second line
A brass band came down the street on a Sunday afternoon and the crowd behind it grew from twelve to two hundred in four blocks. We never found out what it was for.
Fun fact#644
Mexico City is sinking
Built on a drained lakebed, Mexico City sinks several centimetres a year as groundwater is pumped out.
Story#726
Hurricane season lesson
The hotel put tape on the windows and everyone stocked up on ice. It missed us by ninety kilometres and the next morning the beach was covered in shells nobody had ever seen.
Fun fact#646
Mexico has 68 recognised languages
Alongside Spanish, Mexico officially recognises 68 indigenous languages with hundreds of variants.
Quote#253
Nothing behind me
Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.
Fun fact#648
Chichen Itza makes a snake of light
At the equinoxes, shadows on the pyramid's staircase form a serpent that appears to slide down to the ground.
Story#730
The border crossing at midnight
Two hours in a queue of stationary cars with men selling churros between the lanes. By the time we crossed, we had eaten dinner without leaving the vehicle.
Fun fact#650
Cenotes are collapsed cave roofs
Thousands of cenotes dot the Yucatan, formed along a ring of fractures linked to the asteroid impact that ended the dinosaurs.
Story#734
Day of the dead, not Halloween
The cemeteries were full of families with candles, food and folding chairs, staying all night. A woman explained, kindly, that this was a reunion and not a haunting.
Fun fact#651
Chocolate began in Mesoamerica
Cacao was drunk bitter and spiced by the Maya and Aztecs long before Europeans added sugar and milk.
Fun fact#654
Monarch butterflies migrate 4,000 km
Monarchs fly from Canada to a few Mexican mountain forests, and no single butterfly completes the round trip.
Story#737
Mole takes three days
Thirty ingredients, three days, and an argument with a neighbour about whether the chocolate goes in early or late. We were asked to judge and refused sensibly.
Fun fact#656
Guatemala has a lake in a caldera
Atitlan fills a caldera left by a colossal eruption 84,000 years ago and is ringed by three volcanoes.
Quote#413
I went to the woods
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.
Story#740
Swimming in a cenote
The water was so clear that the boat above looked like it was floating in air. Fifteen metres down, tree roots came through the rock looking for it.
Fun fact#657
Belize has the second largest reef
The Belize Barrier Reef is the largest in the northern hemisphere and includes the famous Great Blue Hole.
Fun fact#660
Honduras has a Maya city in the jungle
Copan's hieroglyphic stairway carries the longest known Maya text, over 2,000 glyphs on 63 steps.
Story#744
Chichen Itza handclap
Clap once at the base of the pyramid and the echo comes back sounding like a bird. Our guide said the Maya designed it that way and then let three hundred people clap at once.
Fun fact#661
El Salvador surfs a long point break
Punta Roca near La Libertad delivers one of Central America's most consistent right-hand point breaks.
Story#747
The overnight bus with blankets
Reclining seats, a blanket, a film with no subtitles and a driver who took the mountain road at a speed we chose not to think about. We arrived rested.
Fun fact#664
Nicaragua has an island of two volcanoes
Ometepe sits in a freshwater lake and is formed by two volcanoes joined by a low isthmus.
Quote#418
In wildness is the preservation
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Fun fact#666
Costa Rica abolished its army
Costa Rica dissolved its military in 1948 and redirected the budget to education and health.
Story#751
Volcano boarding
You climb a black cone for an hour carrying a plank and then sit on it and go down. Everyone lies about their speed at the bottom.
Fun fact#667
Costa Rica runs on renewables
For years Costa Rica has generated close to 99 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, mostly hydro and geothermal.
Story#754
Sloth traffic jam
The road was blocked for six minutes by a sloth in no hurry whatsoever. A park worker eventually carried it across and it looked mildly annoyed.
Fun fact#670
Panama's canal uses fresh water
Every ship transit releases millions of litres of fresh lake water to the sea, which is why droughts slow the canal.
Story#757
Zip line nerves
The guide said don't brake, just glide. Halfway across a valley in cloud forest we understood why nobody talks on the way over.
Fun fact#671
Panama sunrise faces the Pacific
Because of the isthmus's S-shape, you can watch the sun rise over the Pacific and set over the Atlantic in Panama.
Fun fact#674
Colombia has two oceans
Colombia is the only South American country with coastlines on both the Caribbean and the Pacific.
Quote#423
Not till we are lost
Not till we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
Story#761
The canal from a small boat
Our boat shared a lock with a container ship the size of a street. The water rose nine metres in eight minutes and the crew above us waved down.
Fun fact#675
Colombia grows most of the world's emeralds
Colombian mines have long supplied the majority of the world's fine emeralds, prized for their deep green.
Story#764
Kuna molas
Every panel is hand stitched in reverse applique and takes weeks. The woman selling them explained the design was her grandmother's and then quoted a price that felt like theft on our side.
Fun fact#677
Bogota closes streets on Sundays
Ciclovia shuts over 100 kilometres of road to cars every Sunday, and hundreds of thousands of people cycle and skate.
Fun fact#680
Colombia has a river of five colours
An aquatic plant turns Cano Cristales red for a few months a year, mixing with green moss and yellow sand.
Story#767
Cartagena heat
We walked the walls at three in the afternoon like idiots. At seven, the same walls were full of people, music and lemonade sellers, and we understood the schedule.
Fun fact#681
Venezuela has the tallest waterfall
Angel Falls drops 979 metres, so far that much of the water becomes mist before reaching the bottom.
Quote#428
Live in each season
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit.
Story#771
Coffee farm arithmetic
The farmer showed us how much a hand-picked kilo earns him and then what a cup costs in London. He wasn't angry about it, which somehow made it worse.
Fun fact#684
Lightning strikes the same lake nightly
Where the Catatumbo River meets Lake Maracaibo, storms produce lightning on around 300 nights a year.
Fun fact#685
Guyana has a single-drop giant waterfall
Kaieteur Falls plunges 226 metres in one drop, roughly five times the height of Niagara, with almost no crowds.
Story#775
Sunday cycling
A hundred kilometres of road closed to cars. Families, racers, a man with a parrot on his handlebars, and free bike repair stands every few kilometres.
Fun fact#687
Suriname speaks Dutch
Suriname is the only South American country with Dutch as its official language, a legacy of colonial rule.
Story#777
The lost city trek
Four days, seven river crossings and 1,200 mossy steps at the end. The guide's family had lived there for generations and he gave the tour partly in his own language.
Fun fact#689
Ecuador is named after the equator
Ecuador is the only country named for a line of latitude, and the true equator sits slightly off the famous monument.
Quote#433
The question is not what you look at
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
Fun fact#691
Chimborazo is closest to space
Because the Earth bulges at the equator, Chimborazo's summit is the furthest point from the planet's centre.
Story#781
Boat to the jungle lodge
Three hours upriver, then the engine off, then paddling into a channel too narrow for the motor. The moment the noise stopped, the forest turned out to be extremely loud.
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