Geography of Latin America: Easy Maps for Beginners

You can learn about the geography of South America by visiting Owl & Mouse. Owl & Mouse provides easy maps to practice with:

(1) Interactive maps
These teach you country names and capitals. When you leave the cursor in place ("hover") over a country, the country's name and capital appear near the cursor:

The small green island south of Cuba is Jamaica

The interactive map of Central America is here:
http://www.yourchildlearns.com/central_america_map.htm

The interactive  map of South America is here:
http://www.yourchildlearns.com/south_america_map.htm

(2) Jigsaw puzzle style maps
These help you recognize the shape of each country and ask you to drag it to the correct space on the map.

Start with the easy version (it includes country shapes to help you)

Drag each country to the correct spot

The jigsaw map of Central America is here:
http://www.yourchildlearns.com/mappuzzle/central-america-puzzle.html

Geography of Latin America: Maps for Experienced Students

Seterra lets you practice geography, but it is a bit difficult (there are no hints), so be sure to practice with Owl & Mouse first:

Seterra prompts you with a country name: you need to find the country on the map. If you make no mistake the first time, your country appears in white. If you make one or two mistakes, the country turns light yellow, then dark yellow. After the third mistake, the country turns red (you need more practice!)

In this example, The big white country (Mexico) was found the first time, so it appears in white. The small red country is Belize (three mistakes = red).

The Galápagos

The Galapagos Islands belong to Ecuador. This is a marvelous place to view unspoiled nature. The islands are named Galápagos (Spanish words: galápago = tortoise; tortuga = turtle) because of all the tortoises that live on the island



GALAPAGOS, más allá de las islas (subtitled) from MaMaLa on Vimeo.

In the sea, there are sea iguanas.


Dragons Of The Sea from globaldivemedia.com on Vimeo.


There are also iguanas on land.


Land Iguana - Galapagos from m24instudio on Vimeo.



galápagos - sea of life from Elements In Motion on Vimeo.

A longer video (1 hour, 40 minutes) appears below:

Food Tourism: Ecuador (How Organic Chocolate is Made)

Ceviche is a cold seafood dish that is popular in South America. The Ecuadorian version is made with shrimp (or other fresh seafood), tomato sauce and lemon juice. In other countries, the seafood is marinated (but not cooked), so I would worry about getting parasites (寄生蟲), but in Ecuador they first cook the shrimp (Whew!), so parasites are not a problem here.

Ecuadorian ceviche, made of shrimp, lemon and tomato sauce, Ceviche ecuatoriano, hecho con camarón, limón y salsa de tomate, CC--BY Rinaldo Wurglitsch

When traveling, some people like to take a few cooking lessons taught by local people. Look at how much fun these students are having!


NatGeo Students Making Empanadas, Quilombitos, and Patacones in Mindo, Ecuador from James Bernal on Vimeo.

Enjoying, learning about and maybe even making tasty food in a new country: Isn't this better than traveling just to buy a Gucci handbag or other expensive items that you can also buy in a big city store?

What about picture taking (not the same as photography)? Are silly, out of focus pictures of you and your friends standing in front of the Eiffel Tower really worthwhile? Tens of thousands of other people have taken exactly the same pictures of famous landmarks before you.

If it was up to me, I would much prefer to bring a small taste of Ecuador back home with me! This is what food tourism (also called culinary tourism or gastronomic tourism) is about. More information here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culinary_tourism

In the National Geographic video, the students make empanadas and eat them. Empanadas are a very popular food in Peru. The word Empanadas is very easy to understand if you know word roots: em = "in" and pan = "bread." Check my earlier blog post for more details: http://cute-geography.blogspot.com/2015/05/taiwanese-phang-is-from-latin.html

Mexico is the home of chocolate, but Ecuador is the source of very tasty organic chocolate. Be a good tourist. Try local products whenever you can!

Below are three videos that show how organic chocolate is made. Cacao is a rather curious fruit that grows directly on the tree trunk. The cacao beans are removed from inside and allowed to ferment. Wikipedia gives us more details
English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate
Chinese: http://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E5%B7%A7%E5%85%8B%E5%8A%9B
but watching videos is much more exciting (I'd like to go see cacao trees and taste the seeds myself)!


Where Does Chocolate Come From? Journey to Ecuador with Nova Monda and Hunt Cacao! from Nova Monda Caco & Chocolate on Vimeo.

Two more videos appear below (processing and production for organic chocolate)

Peru: Alpacas

Alpacas (height = 99 cm or less) are camelids (camel-like animals). In the Andes, farmers raise these animals for their wonderfully soft wool. This wool is different from sheep's wool, because it doesn't have so much oil (lanolin).

Alpaca, CC--BY-SA Galo Manuel _MG_1991--CROPPED.jpg

Alpacas are much smaller than dromedaries (dromedary camels can reach up to 199 cm). Below, a woman is milking a camel. Notice how the dromedary is much taller than the woman.

Camel_milking_in_Niger, CC--BY-SA ACEI Cheung (4Cheungs)

We usually think that camels and similar animals come from deserts in places like Saudi Arabia, but their ancestors actually came from North America.

Distribution of camelids before modern introductions to Australia and elsewhere. Solid black lines indicate possible migration routes, CC-BY-SA Lukasz Lukomski

Half of the ancient camelids went North (through today's Alaska) and then into Asia and North Africa. There, they became Bactrian camels [with TWO humps] and dromedaries [with ONE hump]. The other half went from North America to South America, where they slowly changed and became alpacas and other animals, such as llamas.


Sandra Jordan Prima Alpaca: "Clouds on Earth" from Sandra Jordan Prima Alpaca on Vimeo.

The next video shows you what people can make from alpaca wool:

Potatoes From Peru

Gastronomic tourism means traveling to discover and eat interesting and delicious food. Whenever I travel, I eat local fruit and vegetables whenever possible. I also try to learn about my food from local people, not just eat it.

Potatoes can be eaten in many ways. Can you name the ones below? What other ways do you know? Is eating potatoes a healthy choice? Why?

A few different ways to eat potatoes (Public Domain image)

The first conquistadores, the Spanish people who came to steal Peru's gold, didn't understand that hiding in the dirt was something even more valuable: the potatoes which now feed hundreds of millions of people around the world. In Peru, there are hundreds of different kinds of potatoes:

Purple potatoes and rosmarin, CC--BY-NC-SA Stijn Nieuwendijk.jpg

Papas [the Spanish word for potatoes], CC--BY krebsmaus07.jpg

To find out more, you can visit the International Potato Center (in Peru). The map below shows where most potato varieties came from:

Notice the orange line along the Pacific coast of South America. These are potatoes that grow in the Andes.

Although potatoes originally came from Peru and nearby areas, China now grows the greatest number of potatoes in the world. Here are some Chinese visitors traveling to Peru to find out more:

多样性的守护者：在秘鲁马铃薯公园就气候变化进行的国际交流 from IIED on Vimeo.

An unusual place to visit during a vacation in Peru is Potato Park:

Taiwanese 'Pháng' (= bread) is from Latin 閩南語的ㄆㄤˋ來自拉丁文

[Updated 24 May, 2015 with more details and pictures]

(~ 1 AD) Pan (= bread' in Latin) became the word for bread in French, Spanish and Portuguese. In France, Spain and Portugal, Latin slowly changed its sounds, grammar and vocabulary. Latin thus became three new languages: French, Spanish and Portuguese.

Evolution of 'Pan' (Latin word for bread); Japanese & Taiwanese loanword

(~ 1600 AD) When Jesuit priests and Portuguese sailors went to Japan, they brought a new kind of food, bread. Thus, when Japanese people starting eating this new food, they quite naturally also borrowed the Portuguese word (pão). Of course, Japanese people pronounced and wrote this foreign word in their own way (パン). 

(~1900 AD) 300 years later, this "Japanese" word traveled to Taiwan during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan (1895 to 1945). When Taiwanese people started to learn about bread from the Japanese, this new word was pronounced 'pháng' [ㄆㄤˋ] in Southern Min dialect (In Taiwan, Southern Min is also called Taiwanese). Very few people in Taiwan realize that the word 'pháng' [ㄆㄤˋ] ultimately came from Latin. 

Learning English vocabulary is much easier when you can recognize Latin word roots. Here are some English words with the Latin root pan: companion, company, accompany, pannier and empanada (details appear below):