So, I've been travelling around the world a lot over the last couple of months, and one thing that I've been doing to avoid big roaming data charges on my personal phone, has been using the cached offline maps feature in Google Maps. This has worked without any problems in China, Australia, the UK and the US.
So I'm now in Brazil, and I suddenly find that I can't download any offline maps of the local areas.
When I go to the menu in Google Maps and select Make Available Offline, I get the usual square overlay to select the area, and then it turns red and says "Offline maps is not available in selected area".
I've tried zooming in and out, and moving the selection area around, but no luck.
Answer
It turns out that just because you can see and use a map online, that doesn't mean that Google will allow you to make the area available offline.
Offline maps are only currently available for certain countries, and Brazil isn't currently one of them, in fact it seems to be a fairly odd selection.
Google have published the full list of countries that it's available in here: Maps for Mobile - Offline Availability
EDIT: note that in a July 2013 Google Maps update, Google made offline maps into a hidden feature with no menu option any more. More about how to make maps available offline here: Get offline maps in new Google Maps
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