Mountians,Hills,and Valley's...all part of Mexico's landscapes
The term Mexico City can also apply to the capital’s metropolitan area, which includes the Federal District but extends beyond it to the west, north, and east, where the state (estado) of México surrounds it on three sides.It is ranked as one of the world’s most populous metropolitan areas. One of the few major cities not located along the banks of a river, it lies in an inland basin called the Valley of Mexico, or Mesa Central. The valley is an extension of the southern Mexican Plateau and is also known as Anáhuac (Nahuatl: “Close to the Water”) because the area once contained several large lakes. The name México is derived from Nahuatl, the language of its precolonial inhabitants.Mexico has a 9,330 kilometer coastline, of which 7,338 kilometers face the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California, and the remaining 2,805 kilometers front the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.Beginning approximately 50 kilometers from the United States border, the Sierra Madre Occidental extends about 1250 kilometers south to the Río Santiago, where it merges with the Cordillera Neovolcánica range that runs east-west across central Mexico. The Sierra Madre Occidental lies approximately 300 kilometers inland from the west coast of Mexico at its northern end but approaches to within fifty kilometers of the coast near the Cordillera Neovolcánica. The northwest coastal plain is the name given the lowland area between the Sierra Madre Occidental and the Gulf of California. The Sierra Madre Occidental averages 2,250 meters in elevation, with peaks reaching 3,000 meters.One other significant mountain range, the Peninsular Ranges, cuts across the landscape of the northern half of Mexico. A southern extension of the California coastal ranges that parallel California's coast, the Mexican portion of the Peninsular Ranges extends from the United States border to the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula, a distance of 1,430 kilometers. Peaks in the California system range in altitude from 2,200 meters in the north to only 250 meters near La Paz in the south. Narrow lowlands are found on the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California sides of the mountains.The Cordillera Neovolcánica is a belt 900 kilometers long and 130 kilometers wide, extending from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.