Geography Costa Rica

I think it's time to give you a little impression of what I'm doing at uni. Especially my "Geography of Costa Rica" course is very interesting. This small country is a dream for any geographer. There are four tectonic plates that meet in this region of the world. So the earth's crust is very active here and therefore here occur all these phenomenas like earthquakes, tsunamis and vulcanism. Together with Chile and Japan, Costa Rica is one of the countries in the world with the most earthquakes. They occur every day, but normally you cannot feel them.

Other interesting part of the Geography of Costa Rica is the climate. The country of Costa Rica is orientated in the direction north-west to south-east with the Caribbean Sea on one side, a volcanic mountain chain along the middle and the Pacific sea on the other side.

In the majority of months strong winds come from the direction north-east. To cross the mountain chain they have to leave all there humidity behind. That's the reason why it basically rains all year around on the Caribbean side. These winds reach the pacific side as dry masses of air. This way they produce a dry season on the pacific side between January and April. During the rainy season in the pacific the winds come from south-west and bring strong rains and inundations to the pacific coast. However these winds from south-west are normally not strong enough to cross the mountain chain and produce a dry season on the Caribbean side. At least it rains a little bit less on the Caribbean side during the rainy season on the pacific side.

This diagram shows the amount of rain on the two sides of the country during the different months of the year. I like this diagram because it's easy to see that rain maximums on the two sides occur during seasons with less rain on the other side. Also it's very easy to see that it always rains a lot more on the Caribbean side. A consequence of all this is that there are many different climate zones and therefore many different vegetation and animals. The biodiversity is extremely high!