The largest country in Central America, Nicaragua is sandwiched between Honduras, to the north, and Costa Rica, to the south, while the Caribbean and Pacific oceans lap at either shore.
The land is divided into three major geographic areas, west to east: the Pacific lowlands, the central highlands and the Caribbean lowlands.
The Pacific coastal region is a low plain made fertile by ash from the dozens of volcanoes. It also contains Lake Nicaragua, the largest freshwater body in Central America, and Lake Managua, which has the country's capital city on its shore.
Springing from thelow mountains in the north and Nicaragua's flat belly are a mix of rainforest, cloud forest, mixed pine and oak forest. The country also has a sprinkling of that rarest of sectors, the tropical dry forest.
The Caribbean lowlands consist mainly of wet, hot and humid plains, with pine savannahs to the north and a large expanse of rainforest toward the south, marked by mangroves and numerous rivers that drain from the central mountains.