Mexico vs South Africa

Mexico is 1.6 times larger than South Africa — 1,964,375 against 1,219,090 km². Mexico is 2.0 times more populous than South Africa — 131,946,900 against 64,747,319 people.

Side by side

Population density

Mexico is 1.3 times more densely populated than South Africa — 67 against 53 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 — Mexico on the right, South Africa on the left.
• Different currencies: the Mexican peso and the South African rand.
• Mexico spans 4 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — North America and Africa.

Mexico

Mexico has the fourth-highest count of vertebrate and plant species of any country, and more reptile species than anywhere else. Chicxulub, under the northern Yucatán, is the roughly 180 km crater left by the asteroid impact 66 million years ago. The Sistema Sac Actun beneath the same peninsula is the longest known underwater cave system in the world, over 370 km surveyed.

South Africa

One of only a handful of countries with more than one capital, and the only one with three. The Vredefort Dome south-west of Johannesburg is the largest verified impact crater on Earth, about 300 km across and 2 billion years old. The Cape Floral Region packs roughly 9,000 plant species into a small corner of the country, most of them found nowhere else.

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.