Peru is a large, mountainous country in the western central coast of South America. It shares borders with Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile. The Pacific Ocean lies to the west.
There are three natural zones running north to south: Costa (Coast), Sierra (The Highlands) and Selva (Amazonian Jungle). Peru is the third largest country in South America with an area of 1.285.216 km2.
La Costa hosts the biggest part of the population and all major cities. The narrow coastal plain is mainly a desert area, crossed by valleys of more than 40 rivers that run down from the western Andes. This makes the coast an important agricultural region. The cotton, sugar and rice plantations and most of the oil fields lie in this area.
The Andes or Sierra is the highest region in Peru that goes from 2,000 meters to 6,768 meters above sea level. It is divided in two main ranges: the Cordillera Occidental and the Cordillera Oriental with a high plateau in-between. The Andes is a hard place to live in, but offers one of the best sceneries in the world. The main products are potatoes, cereals and vegetables, and activities like cattle industry, mining and weaving.
The Selva, an area of fertile, subtropical uplands, lies between the Andes and the jungles of eastern Peru. It is a tropical and almost uninhabited zone covered with jungles and crossed with full-flowing rivers. In the dense forest there is an explosion of life conformed by thousands of species of flora and fauna, most of them, unknown until today.
The Amazonian Jungle of eastern Peru has vast natural resources.
Nature has endowed Peru with an enormous variety of climates, landscapes and ecosystems. Eighty-four of the world's 103 known ecological zones and 28 different climates are present in Peru, which place it among the 5 countries with the greatest biological diversity in the world. 50 mountains of 6,000 meters or more above sea level and 1,679 glaciers punctuate the landscape. There are 12,000 lakes of varying sizes and depths, and 262 different river basins. |
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Name: Peru |
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Area: 1.285.216 sq.Km (496,225 sq. miles) |
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Capital City: Lima |
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Population: 23,531,701 |
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Language: Spanish, Quechua |
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Currency: nuevo sol |
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Time Zone: GMT - 6 hours |
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Religion: 90% Roman Catholic |
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