Google Maps, Country Facts and Route Planner
GREENLAND (Kalaallit Nunaat) is the largest island in the world (discounting continental landmasses). It lies mainly within the Arctic Circle, off the northeast coast of Canada. Its vast interior mostly covered with a permanent ice cap that has a known thickness of up to 3,300 meters or 11,000 feet.
GREECE or the Hellenic Republic consists of a mainland portion and more than 1,400 islands. Mainland Greece occupies the southernmost portion of the Balkans Peninsula and shares borders with Albania in the northwest, with Macedonia (FYROM) and Bulgaria in the north, and Turkey in the northeast. The Aegean Sea lies to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Ionian Sea to the west.
The Ionian Islands (lonioi Nisoi), including Corfu (Kerkira), lie off the western mainland coast in the Ionian Sea. The remaining Greek islands scattered throughout the Aegean Sea. They include the Cyclades (Kikladhes) group in the southeast, Crete (Kriti) in the south, the Dodecanese group (Dhodhekanisos), including Rhodes (Rodhos), just west of mainland Turkey, the northern Aegean Islands, such a Thásos, Limnos, and Lésvós, and the Northern Sporades (Voriai Sporhadhes), situated off the eastern coast of Greece. In general, the islands are quite arid, hilly, and stony, with thin soils that are difficult to cultivate.
GIBRALTAR, or “The Rock”, is a limestone promontory situated at the end of a peninsula that forms the southernmost tip of Spain.
Its strategic importance, guarding as it makes the western approaches to the Mediterranean and separated from Morocco by the narrow Straits of Gibraltar, has meant that it has had a fascinating human history stretching back over thousands of years to Neolithic times.
GHANA is located on the southern coast of West Africa between Cote d’Ivoire and Togo. In 1957, as the former British Gold Coast, it became the first black African state to achieve independence from European colonial rule.
The country has palm-fringed beaches of white sand along the Gulf of Guinea, and where the great River Volta meets the sea, there are peaceful blue lagoons. A coastal, grassy plain gives way to a dense jungle in the southwest and savannah country and woodland in the interior and north.
There is a range of modest-sized mountains (up to 900 meters or 2,950 feet) along the eastern border with Togo. The landscape becomes harsh and barren near the border with Burkina Faso in the far north. Forested areas have been greatly reduced and cleared during the 20th century, although some efforts were made to halt this process.
GERMANY is a large populous country in northern central Europe, which comprises the former East and West German Republics, reunified in 1990. In the north lies the North German Plain, which merges with the North Rhineland in the west. Further south, a plateau that stretches across the country from east to west is divided by the River Rhine. In the southwest, the Black Forest Mountains, or Schwarzwald, separate the Rhine Valley from Swabia’s fertile valleys and scarp lands. The Bavarian Forest is in the southeast, approaching the border with the Czech Republic. The Bohemian Uplands and Erz Mountains mark the border with the Czech Republic. The beautiful River Danube, the second-longest river in Europe, rises in the Bavarian Alps and crosses most southern Germany.
However, Germany’s most famous river is the mighty Rhine, which flows along the border with Switzerland and France before heading northwards towards the Netherlands and the North Sea.
The Rhine has several large and important tributaries, including the Neckar, Main, Lahn, Mosel, Ruhr, and Lippe, and is a major navigable waterway used to transport considerable amounts of freight. Because of heavy industrial development along much of the Rhine valley’s length, there are considerable problems with water pollution. Efforts continue to make, however, to address this situation and to improve water quality.
GEORGIA, a republic in the southwest of the former USSR, gained full independence from Russia in 1991. It shares borders with Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Russian Federation and is bounded to the west by the Black Sea. The country incorporates the breakaway republic of Abkhazia and the semi-autonomous regions of Adzharia and South Ossetia. It consists of a coastal plain and low-lying river valleys sandwiched between two high mountain ranges – the Great Caucasus in the north and the Lesser Caucasus in the south.
The climate on the coast is moist and warm, while inland, it is dry, with hot summers and cold winters. Glaciers and snowfields occur on the highest peaks of the Caucasus Mountains. About one-third of the country is forested, with conifers on the mountain slopes and deciduous species lower down. Wildlife includes deer, lynx, wolf, wild boar, and eagle.
GAMBIA is the smallest country in Africa. The Republic of the Gambia comprises a small finger of land, pushing eastwards into Senegal from the Atlantic coast in a narrow band along either side of the Gambia River.
The republic is enclosed on all its landward sides by the territory of Senegal. It mostly does not exceed 24 kilometers or 15 miles in width, only broadening to 48 kilometers or 30 miles in the east. The country is divided along its entire length by the River Gambia, which can only be crossed at two main ferry crossings.
The country consists of the river and the low plateau through which it flows interspersed with a few small, flattened hills.
GABON is a small republic in west-central Africa that straddles the Equator. It comprises the land which surrounds the Ogooué river basin and its tributaries, and most of the country covered with lush tropical rainforests.
Beyond the coastal plain and the flatter land of the valley bottoms, Gabon is ringed by upland plateaux and mountains ranging in height from 900-1,575 meters or 3,000-5,167 feet.
The forests contain a huge diversity of plants and animals, including commercially valuable trees harvested for export. It was at Lambarene in east Gabon that Albert Schweitzer, the medical missionary, had his hospital.
FRENCH POLYNESIA is an island territory whose links with France mean a relatively high standard of living for its citizens. It consists of 5 separate archipelagoes whose islands scattered between the Cook Islands to the west and the Pitcairn Islands to the east over 4 million square kilometers or 1.5 million square miles of the southeast Pacific Ocean. Most of the islands are mountainous and volcanic, but some are low-lying coral atolls.
Guiana, FRENCH GUIANA, or GUYANE, as the name suggests, remains an overseas department of France, and the mother country heavily subsidizes its economy. It is bounded to the south and east by Brazil and the west by Suriname. The coastal belt is a narrow strip of marshy mangrove swamps, but the land gradually rises inland towards the Tumac-Humac Mountains. These straddle the Brazilian border but are of modest height by South American standards.
Behind the coast, there is some savannah, but 90 percent of French Guiana covered with hot, humid, tropical forests that are thinly populated by people but inhabited by South American jungle animals such as tapirs, monkeys, anteaters, jaguars, ocelots, caimans and exotic birds.
Off the coast, lie the lies de Salut (Salvation Islands) and Devil’s Island, the latter having a particularly notorious place in the country’s history as a prison settlement.
The climate is tropical, with heavy rainfall.