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Can you locate all 24 provinces of Ecuador, Galápagos included?
Can you locate all 22 departments of Guatemala?
Can you place all 512 departments of Argentina, and the partidos of Buenos Aires Province?
Can you locate all 23 provinces of Argentina, and its capital city?
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The canton (cantón) is the second tier of Costa Rica, between the seven provinces and the districts, and the unit that names a town on a road sign. The cantons run from slivers of the Central Valley to the huge lowlands of the north and the south.
The cantons of Costa Rica, each named for its main town, which is why several share a name with their province or with a neighbour: San José is both the province and the canton around the capital, and San Carlos, San Ramón and San Isidro are all different places.
They are very uneven. The Central Valley packs dozens of small cantons next to each other, and the smallest, Belén, is a few square kilometres between Heredia and Alajuela, so the smallest have a tap area wider than their outline. In the north, San Carlos is the largest canton in the country and Sarapiquí and Upala are not far behind. Recently created cantons, such as Monteverde, Puerto Jiménez and Río Cuarto, are drawn as the source has them.
Cocos Island is part of the canton of Puntarenas but is not drawn, since it would push the whole country out to sea.
The groups are the provinces, so the game lets you drill them one at a time. Each province answers under the same name in Costa Rica Provinces.
San José canton is the city itself, in the middle of the Central Valley and ringed by Escazú, Desamparados, Goicoechea and their neighbours. It is the canton the rest of the valley is described against.
Belén is a few square kilometres between Heredia and Alajuela, next to the international airport. It is small enough to hide between Flores, Santa Ana and San Rafael.
San Carlos fills the northern plains of Alajuela up to the Nicaraguan border. It is the largest canton in the country, and its town is the centre of the area the Costa Ricans call the Zona Norte.
Eighty-four in the boundaries this quiz uses. New cantons have been carved off older ones in recent years, so the number has crept up.
San Carlos, in the north of Alajuela province, by area.
It is part of the canton of Puntarenas, about 550 km out in the Pacific. Drawing it would shrink the rest of the country to a corner of the screen, so it is clipped.
The tier above this one is Costa Rica Provinces, whose provinces are the groups here. For another small country at this level, see Luxembourg Communes.
