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PANAMA is a narrow, S-shaped isthmus that links Central America and South America. It is only about 177 kilometers or 110 miles across at its widest point. Most of the country is mountainous, although the peaks are modest by Central American standards.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA in the southwest Pacific comprises the eastern half of New Guinea and several archipelagoes and islands, including New Britain, the Bismarck Archipelago, and New Ireland. The other half of New Guinea is Irian Jaya, part of the Indonesian territory. The main island has a mainly low-lying coast and southern half, but there are spectacular and rugged mountains that form the Highlands from the center to the north.
PARAGUAY is a small landlocked country in central South America. Bordered by Bolivia, Brazil, and Argentina and divided into two distinct regions by the River Paraguay.
Paraguay Occidental is the broader region to the west of the river. It consists of a marshy, alluvial plain, which is also part of the Gran Chaco. Much of this area is waterlogged swamp in the south and east, but the land rises gradually and gives way to grassy fields and arid scrub forest towards the northwestern border. Paraguay Oriental lies to the east of the River Paraguay and consists mainly of an upland plateau called the Parana Plateau.
PERU is located just south of the Equator, on the Pacific coast of South America. The country has four topographical regions that run mainly north to south: the Costa, the high Sierra, Montana, and the Selva.
The Costa is a narrow coastal belt that varies in width between about 56-160 kilometers or 35-100 miles. It is mainly a desert region except were traversed by rivers flowing westwards to the Pacific. The valleys of these rivers cultivated for rice, cotton, and sugar cane.
PITCAIRN ISLANDS are a British overseas territory situated in the southeast Pacific Ocean.
POLAND is situated on the North European Plain with a Baltic Sea coastline. It shares borders with Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Russia (Kaliningrad) to the north, and Belarus and Ukraine to the east.
Poland consists mainly of lowlands. A low-lying narrow coastal plain of sandy beaches and dunes forms most of the Baltic Sea coastline in the north.
The low-lying wooded hills and valleys of the Baltic Heights region lie further inland and then come to the extensive central lowlands, which are crossed by numerous rivers and streams in a series of shallow valleys. There is a region of uplands and valleys in the south, and then the land rises more steeply to form the Sudeten Mountains and ranges of the Carpathian Mountains.
The Plain of Silesia lies in the southwest beyond the Sudeten Mountains.
PORTUGAL, in the southwest corner of Europe, makes up about 15 percent of the Iberian Peninsula. It includes the island groups of Madeira and the Azores in the Atlantic.
Lying to the west of Spain, mainland Portugal has a long Atlantic coastline and is mountainous only in the north, where the mountain ranges are lower extensions of those in Spain. The highest peaks occur north of the River Tejo (Tajo in Spain) in the Sierra da Estrela, reaching a height of 2,000 meters or 6,562 feet. South of the Tejo river lies the wheat fields and cork plantations of the Alentejo region’s extensive plains.
A range breaks these hills that divide them from the coastal plain of the Algarve, with its beautiful groves of almond, fig, and olive trees.
PUERTO RICO is the most easterly of the Greater Antilles Islands and lies in the Caribbean Sea between the Dominican Republic and the US Virgin Islands. It is a self-governing commonwealth in association with the USA, and its people are US citizens.
The country includes the main island, Puerto Rico, the two small islands of Vieques and Culebra, and a fringe of smaller uninhabited islands. The climate is tropical, modified slightly by cooling sea breezes.
QATAR, an oil-rich emirate that lies halfway along the Gulf Coast, is an absolute monarchy. A former British Protectorate, it became fully independent in 1971.
It comprises a low barren peninsula and a few small islands. Apart from some low hills in the northwest, it consists of low-lying, arid, stony desert and salt flats.
RÉUNION is a French overseas department in the Indian Ocean, south of Mauritius. The island is mountainous and has one active and several extinct volcanoes.