Chile

Utility poles have a long recessed section in the middle with no dividers, though there may be one or two dividers occasionally.

Sign posts also have a groove like utility poles. This is an extremely strong clue and one of the first things worth learning.

The language is Spanish.

Lupins sometimes grow along the roadside, with purple or white flowers.

Bollards and guardrails sometimes have yellow reflectors.

Roads sometimes have red reflectors attached.

Taxi license plates are an orange or red-ish color. That said, ordinary plate colors include white, red, orange, and green, among others, so the plate alone is hard to use for identification.

You might come across facilities belonging to lithium companies (Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile, also known as SOQUIMICH/SQM, and Albemarle) or copper companies.

If dark green, rounded trees are planted in stripes running up and down a dry, brown, steep hillside, that's an avocado (palta) orchard. Most are concentrated in Valparaíso region.

Wine production is a major industry in the central region (from the Santiago Metropolitan Region to Maule). Vineyards themselves extend a bit further south, into Ñuble and Biobío.

Corn fields can be found from Maule to O'Higgins, though they don't seem to be especially numerous.

In the Atacama Desert area, farming is only possible in river valleys, and it's especially active along the Copiapó River. Olives, citrus, grapes and other crops are produced.

If pine or eucalyptus of uniform height are arranged in square blocks across hillsides, that's a southern planted forest. These are concentrated in Biobío region, and more than half are radiata pine.

A tree with branches spreading horizontally like an umbrella, covered all the way to the trunk in stiff, triangular leaves, is a monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana). On the Chilean side, it grows naturally only in the south-central Andes at 1,000-1,700m elevation, and in part of the Coastal Range.

If a treeless, yellowish, low-grass plain stretches to the horizon, with the grass all leaning the same way from a strong west wind, that's the Patagonian steppe. In Chile, this occurs only east of the Andes, at the eastern edges of Magallanes and Aysén regions.

Chile has many distinctive plants, and they can sometimes tell you your north-south position. Chilean rhubarb grows only in a limited area.

Cacti are seen around the latitude of Route E-375.

North of Curicó, snow-capped mountains are almost never seen.

If a winding inlet has rows of square or circular pens, with a working pier and small buildings on the shore, that's a salmon farm. Los Lagos region is the centre.

If you see a dry mountain with a huge terraced open pit, gray waste-rock plateaus, and wide mine access roads, that's a copper mine. They are common in the northern deserts, such as Antofagasta region, with El Teniente the only one in the Andes mountains of central Chile.

If brown and gray sand and rock plains and mountains, with almost no grass or trees, stretch to the horizon, that's the Atacama Desert in the north. Apart from inside towns and river valleys, there is almost no greenery.

Near Santiago de Chile, there are distinctive mountains sparsely covered with trees and grass. Worth remembering.

Escondida Mine, one of the highest copper-producing mines in the world, sprawls across part of the Atacama Desert. Unpaved roads and mining-related facilities are visible.

In Puerto Williams, snow-covered mountains and the sea are visible to the north. On rare occasions, truck-like vehicles can be seen too.

Puerto Toro is the southernmost permanently inhabited community. There are no paved roads, and coverage here was captured on foot.