Travel to North America | North America Tourist Guides

The golden gate  and the  vibrant San Francisco, the red rock formations of monument valley, the grand canyon, endless prairies, the legacy of the Maya, Aztecs, and immigrants from each and every corner of the globe, the colonial towns of Mexico, Caribbean islands, historic Route 66 and highway No.1, and New York City.. Welcome to North America. North America is a continent with many faces.

The northern continent of the western hemisphere stretches from the Arctic Ocean to the Caribbean Sea. North America can be divided into 3 large geographic regions running from North to South. The Western portion of the continent is dominated by Cordilleras, a series of mountain ranges which contains Alaska’s Mount McKinley (6,194meters), the continent’s tallest mountain. The Appalachian Mountains stretch through much of eastern North America. In between these two regions lie the vast central plains of North America. One of the continent’s most interesting geographic attractions is Death Valley, the lowest Point on the planet’s surface.

The Rocky Mountains, the largest mountain chain in North America, extend through the United States and Canada. In the American Southwest, the Rocky Mountains border the Sierra Madre Mountain range which extends through most of Mexico and into Central America. The Isthmus of Panama is only 50 kilometers wide. The islands on the Caribbean form a large chain running from Cuba to South America and are separated into 2 groups: the Lesser Antilles and the Greater Antilles. In addition to the larger nations on the continent (Canada, Mexico, and the United States) there are numerous smaller North American nations. The indigenous people (Native Americans and Inuit) of North America form only a small portion of the population in Canada and the United States, while most Mexicans and Central Americans are at least of partial indigenous descent.

The United States is home to many diverse landscapes including the glaciers of Alaska’s Glacier Bay, the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains, and monument valley in the deserts of the southwest. The Alaska Range, the Rocky Mountains and the Coast mountains all belong to the North American cordilleras, a series of Mountain ranges. The 60,20 kilometers long Mississippi Missouri river system is the largest river system in North America. The drainage basin of the Mississippi covers an area of 3,208,000 km2. The Canadian Mackenzie and Yukon rivers are the second and third largest rivers on the continent respectively. Over the centuries, millions of European immigrants settled in North America and most of the continent’s population is of European descent. Millions of North Americans, mostly in the United States and the Caribbean, are of African descent. Canada and the USA attract a large number of immigrants every year, including many migrants from neighboring Mexico.

The world’s largest island, Greenland (2175, 600km2) and the world’s fifth largest island, Baffin Island (517,890km2) are among the many arctic islands surrounding the North American mainland. The largest islands in the Caribbean Sea are Cuba (111,000km2), Hispaniola (76,000km2) and Jamaica (10,990km2). St. Lucia is one of the smaller Caribbean nations with an area of 616km2.  Sometimes known as Hawaii, Big Island is the youngest of the islands in the Hawaiian group – so young that some areas are volcanically active.

The final stretch of the journey seems to take a long time but the wait for this beautiful continent is well worth it.

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