Loading game...
Can you place all 153 municipalities of Nicaragua?
Can you place all 196 provinces of Peru?
Can you locate all 23 states of Venezuela, plus the Capital District and the Federal Dependencies?
Can you locate all 14 parishes of Jamaica?
Something on this map looks wrong? Report a map issue
Nicaragua is the largest country in Central America, and its first tier is fifteen departments plus two autonomous regions that fill the whole Caribbean side. Most of the people live on the Pacific half, in departments no bigger than a county, while most of the land is the two big regions to the east.
The first tier of Nicaragua: fifteen departments, and the North and South Caribbean Coast autonomous regions, which were set up in 1987 and between them cover about half of the country. The regions are named on the map as the North Caribbean Coast and the South Caribbean Coast, though older maps, and the sources this one is drawn from, still call them the North and South Atlantic.
The map is lopsided. Along the Pacific, Granada, Masaya and Carazo are small and close together around the two big lakes, Managua and Nicaragua, while the two Caribbean regions are each several times the size of the biggest department. Río San Juan is the long thin one along the Costa Rican border, following the river that gives it its name.
The groups are the three macro-regions Nicaraguans usually describe their country by, the Pacific lowlands, the Central North highlands and the Caribbean, and no law defines them. Río San Juan is counted with the Caribbean because its rivers run that way. The departments are the Nicaragua Municipalities joined together, so the borders of the two maps match exactly.
Granada is one of the smallest departments and the oldest colonial city on the continent, on the north west shore of Lake Nicaragua. It is only four municipalities, so once the lake is found it is the quickest to place.
The North Caribbean Coast is the largest first-tier division, from the Honduran border at the Coco river to the pine savannah and rainforest inland. It is mostly empty, so a round there is more often the coast than anywhere inland.
Río San Juan is the southern strip along Costa Rica, named for the river that drains Lake Nicaragua to the Caribbean. It runs east to the sea, so it is the department that reaches both the lake and the Caribbean coast.
Fifteen, and two autonomous regions on the Caribbean coast, which are the same tier. The quiz asks all seventeen.
The North and South Caribbean Coast, created in 1987 from the old department of Zelaya, which is why the Caribbean side has only two divisions.
Nicaragua has nothing between the departments and the country, so the Pacific, the Central North and the Caribbean are a way to drill the map, not a classification.
The tier below this one is Nicaragua Municipalities. For a neighbour, see Guatemala Departments.
