Chile vs New Zealand

Chile is 2.8 times larger than New Zealand — 756,102 against 268,838 km². Chile is 3.7 times more populous than New Zealand — 19,859,921 against 5,324,700 people.

Side by side

Population density

Chile is 1.3 times more densely populated than New Zealand — 26 against 20 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• They drive on opposite sides — Chile on the right, New Zealand on the left.
• Different currencies: the Chilean peso and the New Zealand dollar.
• Chile spans 3 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — South America and Oceania.

Chile

About 4,300 km from north to south and averaging only around 177 km wide — one of the most elongated countries on Earth. The Atacama in the north is the driest non-polar desert in the world, and some weather stations there have never recorded rain. That dryness and altitude is why most of the world's large optical telescopes are built here.

New Zealand

Two main islands and around 600 smaller ones, roughly 1,600 km long. New Zealand broke away from Gondwana about 80 million years ago and had no land mammals except bats until people arrived, which is why so many of its birds are flightless. The Southern Alps run most of the South Island and reach 3,724 m at Aoraki / Mount Cook.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.