Mexico Travel Guide

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Mexico is a country bursting with life - the people are vivacious, the landscape strewn with historical gems and the nightlife tequila fuelled.

Mexico City, the capital, is teeming with activity and has a population of more than 20 million people. It is also a great starting point for learning more about the country's cultural past - the Plaza de las Tres Culturas celebrates the three major cultures that have shaped Mexico: there are Aztec ruins, the 17th-century colonial church of San Diego and several late 20th-century buildings.

Where the Caribbean Sea meets the Yucatan Peninsula, coral reefs come alive, with sea creatures, great and small. Whilst the desert is home to agave, the mother of all tequilas and the blue plant has a lot to answer for in Acapulco and Cancún, where humans come ashore after a day in the surf to flirt in bars and nightclubs.

Geography

Mexico is at the southern extremity of North America and is bordered to the north by the USA, northwest by the Gulf of California, west by the Pacific, south by Guatemala and Belize, and east by the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

Mexico's geographical features range from swamp to desert, and from tropical lowland jungle to high alpine vegetation. Over half the country is at an altitude greater than 1,000m (3,300ft). The central land mass is a plateau flanked by ranges of mountains to the east and west that lie roughly parallel to the coast. The northern area of this plateau is arid and thinly populated, and occupies 40% of the total area of Mexico.