Fill countries in python basemap

As has already been said by @unutbu, Thomas’ post here is exactly what you are after.

Should you want to do this with Cartopy, the corresponding code (in v0.7) can be adapted from http://scitools.org.uk/cartopy/docs/latest/tutorials/using_the_shapereader.html slightly:

import cartopy.crs as ccrs
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import cartopy.io.shapereader as shpreader
import itertools
import numpy as np

shapename="admin_0_countries"
countries_shp = shpreader.natural_earth(resolution='110m',
                                        category='cultural', name=shapename)

# some nice "earthy" colors
earth_colors = np.array([(199, 233, 192),
                                (161, 217, 155),
                                (116, 196, 118),
                                (65, 171, 93),
                                (35, 139, 69),
                                ]) / 255.
earth_colors = itertools.cycle(earth_colors)



ax = plt.axes(projection=ccrs.PlateCarree())
for country in shpreader.Reader(countries_shp).records():
    print country.attributes['name_long'], earth_colors.next()
    ax.add_geometries(country.geometry, ccrs.PlateCarree(),
                      facecolor=earth_colors.next(),
                      label=country.attributes['name_long'])

plt.show()