Covering almost two million sq km (800,000 sq. mi), Mexico follows a Northwest to Southeast curve, narrowing to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec then continuing to  the Yucatán Peninsula. On the west and south the country is bordered by the  Pacific Ocean, with the Gulf of California lying between the Baja California peninsula and the mainland. Mexico's east coast is washed by the Gulf of Mexico,  while the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula meets the Caribbean Sea. Mexico  shares borders with the USA (to the north), and Guatemala and Belize (to the Southeast).

Mexico is a mountainous country with two north-south ranges framing a group  of broad central plateau known as the Altiplano Central. In the south, the  Sierra Madre del Sur stretches across the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca to the  Isthmus of Tehuantepec. From the isthmus, a narrow stretch of lowlands runs  along the Pacific coast south to Guatemala. These lowlands are backed by the  Chiapas highlands, which merge into a steamy tropical rainforest area stretching into northern Guatemala. The flat, low Yucatán Peninsula is tropical savannah to  its tip, where there's an arid, desert-like region.

Bridging temperate and tropical regions, and lying in the latitudes that contain most of the world's deserts, Mexico has an enormous range of natural environments and vegetation zones. Its rugged, mountainous topography adds to the variety by creating countless microclimates. Despite the potential for great ecological diversity, human impact has been enormous. Before the Spanish conquest, about two-thirds of the country was forested.

Today, only one-fifth of the country remains verdant, mainly in the south and east. Domesticated grazing animals have pushed the larger animals, such as puma, deer and coyote, into isolated pockets. However, armadillos, rabbits and snakes are common, and the  tropical forests of the south and east still harbor (in places) howler and  spider monkeys, jaguars, ocelots, tapirs, anteaters, peccaries (a type of wild  pig), deer, macaws, toucans, parrots and some tropical reptiles, such as the boa constrictor, though these habitats too are being eroded