Columbia

The language is Spanish.

The back of road signs has a cross (the so-called "Colombia cross"). Seen from behind, the cross is clearly visible; from the front, four screws show. Poles and the sign backs are often white.

License plates, front and back, are yellow or white. Motorbikes also carry a yellow plate on the back.

Roadsides often have wooden fences strung with barbed wire.

The area southeast of the Meta River gets closer to the Amazon, and the soil turns red too.

The very northern coast has near-desert soil.

Along the north coast, you may spot white sand, or sand drifted into the corners of streets in town.

If a whitish, slender-trunked palm stands head and shoulders — many times over — above the surrounding trees, dotted here and there across pastureland, that's the wax palm (Ceroxylon). It reaches 45m tall and is common in the cloud-forest zone at 2,000-3,100m elevation.

If you see short, column-like plants with thick, hairy leaves in a rosette (frailejones) dotting a treeless, tan-colored grassland, that's páramo. It sits above the tree line, at elevations over 3,000m, with near-constant mist and damp ground.

The northeastern interior, east of the Eastern Andes, opens into flat land, with some savanna-like areas. North of the Meta River the soil is poor in nutrients, vegetation is sparse, and tall trees don't grow.

If a steep slope is filled edge to edge with waist-to-chest-high dark green shrubs planted along the contour lines, with shade bananas (plantains) scattered here and there among them, that's the coffee belt (Eje Cafetero, centred on Caldas department and others). Towns often sit on flat ridges above the slopes.

If dozens of low, white, translucent-plastic greenhouses pack a flat highland edge to edge, that's a cut-flower farm. The main growing areas are Cundinamarca department (the Bogotá savanna) and Antioquia department.

Uniform-height bananas planted in neat rows on dead-flat lowland, with blue plastic bags over the bunches on a large-scale plantation, means export bananas. There are only two places: the Urabá region in northwestern Antioquia department and the area around Magdalena department on the Caribbean coast.

Farming only happens in flat areas. Since flat land is scarce, crop clues aren't all that useful here.

Artificial oil palm plantations cluster around Meta department, which has many oil mills, and northern Santander department. There are exceptions.

Sugar cane fields are in the flat land around Valle del Cauca department.

If you spot a cotton field, think Tolima or Córdoba.

Rice production is led by Casanare department in the eastern Llanos, followed by Tolima and Meta departments. Rice paddies themselves are rare, though.

Bollards have the road number written on them.

In Antioquia department, centered on Medellín, utility poles have yellow and black stripes.

The San Andrés, Providencia, and Santa Catalina archipelago has a distinctive Google Car.

Taxis and trucks carry a side plate (sticker) on the roof or side bearing the city name.

The roads into Buenaventura carry many trucks loaded with containers.

Bocachica, on Tierra Bomba Island, is a remote fortified island town, and its Street View was shot on foot — with someone walking alongside you.

Leticia, near the Brazil-Peru border, has a distinctive Google Car. It's a thriving tourist town with plenty of taxis and visitors.

There is Street View shot on foot on the remote Gorgona Island.

The remote town of Santa Rosalía, far from other towns, has a small amount of Street View.