Mexico
Free and always accurate driving directions, Google Maps, traffic information for Mexico (MX). Explore satellite imagery of Mexico City, Mexico’s capital city, on the Google Maps of North America below.
Mexico (GPS: 23 00 N, 102 00 W) located in North America, bordering the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, between Belize and the United States and bordering the North Pacific Ocean, between Guatemala and the United States. The country’s area measurements are total: 1,964,375 sq km; land: 1,943,945 sq km, water: 20,430 sq km. This sovereign state is slightly less than three times the size of Texas. The total irrigated land is 65,000 sq km (2012).
One of the essential features of Mexico: Strategic location on the southern border of the US. Mexico is one of the countries along the Ring of Fire, a belt of active volcanoes and earthquake epicenters bordering the Pacific Ocean. Up to 90% of the world’s earthquakes and some 75% of the world’s volcanoes occur within the Ring of Fire. The “Three Sisters” companion plants – winter squash, maize (corn), and climbing beans – served as the main crops for various North American Indian groups. All three originated in Mexico but then were widely disseminated through much of North America. Vanilla, the world’s most popular aroma, and flavor spice, also emanates from Mexico.
The Sac Actun cave system at 348 km (216 mi) is the longest underwater cave globally and the second-longest cave worldwide, after Mammoth Cave in the United States. Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize share the prominent Yucatan Peninsula that divides the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea. On the northern coast of Yucatan, near the town of Chicxulub (pronounce cheek-sha-loob), lie the remnants of a massive crater (some 150 km in diameter and extending well out into the Gulf of Mexico). Formed by an asteroid or comet when it struck the earth 66 million years ago, the impact is now widely accepted as initiating a worldwide climate disruption that caused a mass extinction of 75% of all the earth’s plant and animal species – including the non-avian dinosaurs.