El Salvador: Physical Geography

El Salvador is the smallest country on the Central American mainland and the only one without a coastline on the Caribbean, bordered by Guatemala to the northwest, Honduras to the north and east, and the Pacific Ocean to the south. Its landscape is dominated by volcanic terrain, situated within the Central American volcanic arc, and divided broadly into a northern mountain range, a central plateau, a southern chain of volcanoes, and a narrow Pacific coastal plain.

The central highlands contain a west-to-east line of roughly twenty volcanic cones, including Izalco, long nicknamed the "Lighthouse of the Pacific" for its once-frequent eruptions, and Santa Ana, the country's highest volcano at 2,365 meters. Between the volcanoes lie fertile basins formed from ash and lava that have supported coffee cultivation for generations and today hold most of the country's population and largest cities, including the capital, San Salvador. The Sierra Madre, running along the border with Honduras, forms a more sparsely populated northern highland region shaped by heavy erosion.

The Río Lempa, El Salvador's longest and only navigable river, rises in Guatemala and crosses the northern highlands and central plateau before cutting through the southern volcanic range to the Pacific. Numerous crater lakes dot the interior highlands, the largest being Lago de Ilopango near San Salvador. A narrow coastal plain, widest near the Gulf of Fonseca in the east, separates the volcanic highlands from the Pacific shoreline.