All around US

Some quarters insist we see the Americas as one block and this seems reasonable until you realise that that there is an isthmus between Africa and Eurasia and no one is suggesting a supercontinent (indeed Europe and Asia are more often seen as discrete).

But even North America has the kind of definitional indeterminants that we find in Sahul  and surrounds, with some identifying it as the US and Canada alone, others adding Mexico.

 North America


Anguilla
Antigua and Barbuda
Aruba
Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Bermuda
British Virgin Islands
Canada
Cayman Islands
Clipperton Island
Costa Rica
Cuba
Dominica
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Greenland
Grenada
Guadeloupe
Haiti
Honduras
Isla Aves
Jamaica
Martinique
Mexico
Montserrat
Navassa Island
Netherlands Antilles
Nicaragua
Panama
Puerto Rico
Saint Barthélemy
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Martin
Saint Pierre and Miquelon
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
San Andrés y Providencia
Trinidad and Tobago
Turks and Caicos Islands
United States
United States Virgin Islands

(Central America and the Caribbean and Latin America are regions, not continental designations)

"I hear that South America is coming into style"

It seems that whenever you hear reports of South America, it is a tale of woe; of endemic corruption and vice. Even history speaks of blood sacrifice and barbarity. But then I realise that this is in the nature of the news. Why should a report of that part of the Americas that rarely gets to tell its story (at least not to us, and not in a language we understand) shy from catastrophe? Here is a Cook's tour of a different kind:



Argentina
Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Ecuador
Guyana
Paraguay
Peru
Suriname
Uruguay
Venezuala




SOUTH AMERICAN TERRITORIES



Galapagos Islands
Falkland Islands
French Guiana

Heading South

We may be known by the Northern Hemisphere as Down Under but in truth there is a Greater Southern Land that is further down still. This incredible place is a larger continent than both Australasia/Oceania and Europe yet has no states, no capitals, no countries. Just ice really, with seals and penguins and nematodes.

It's considered a desert (an extremely large and incredibly cold one). In fact, it's the coldest, driest and windiest continent with the highest average elevation. And, understandably, doesn't have a static population; just 1,000 to 5,000 researchers and scientists scattered throughout.

And you do start to see mention of Antarctica when you are in the southern part of Tasmania as it really isn't that far.