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Peru Geography Peru's territory has an area of 1,285,216 km². It is bordered by Ecuador and Colombia on the north, Brazil and Bolivia to the east, and finally Chile and Bolivia to the south. To the west lies the Pacific Ocean. Its population has more than 27 million inhabitants that speak Spanish, with others bilingual in Quechua or Aymara and other native languages. Eastern Peru consists mostly of the moist tropical jungles of the Amazon Rain Forest, the largest on Earth. In the southeast along the border with Bolivia lies Lake Titicaca — the highest navigable lake in the world. The Altiplano plateau is a dry basin located along the slopes of the Andes in southeastern Peru. Along the border with Chile, the Atacama Desert is the driest place on the planet. The Peruvian Sea is home to a large amount and variety of fish life. The Sechura Desert is located in northwestern Peru along the Pacific coastline. The main rivers of Peru include the Ucayali, Marañon, Amazon (which is formed by the confluence of the Marañon and the Ucayali), Putumayo, Pastaza, Napo, Jurua, and the Purus. Peru is divided in 24 departments and one constitutional province. The largest main cities include: Lima (the capital and the economic and cultural centre) Arequipa Trujillo Chiclayo Callao (the contitutional province) Cusco (the capital of the ancient Inca Empire) Piura Tacna Ica, Puno, Chimbote, Huancayo, Cajamarca, Pucallpa, and Iquitos. Physiographic regions When the Spanish arrived, they divided Peru (because of political reasons) into three main regions: the Coastal region, which is bounded by the Pacific Ocean; the Highlands, that is located in the Andean Heights, and the Jungle, which is located on the Amazonian Jungle. But Javier Pulgar Vidal, a geographer who studied the biogeographic reality of the Peruvian territory for a long time, proposed the creation of eight Natural Regions. In 1941, the III General Assembly of the Pan-American Institute of Geography and History approved this motion. These eight Peruvian regions are: Chala or Coast (subtropical dry and tropical savanna) Yunga Quechua Suni or Jalca Puna Janca Rupa - Rupa or High Jungle Omagua or Low Jungle |
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