Both maps below show Nicaragua highlighted. At 13° Mercator inflates Nicaragua by only about 5%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Jamaica beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 13°, Nicaragua sits in the band the old map drew almost honestly. It is one of the regions Mercator quietly under-represented, and that is exactly what the new Equal Earth map restores.
Nicaragua: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Nicaragua | 130,373 km² | 137,152 km² | 1.1× |
| Greenland | 2,166,086 km² | 25,576,494 km² | 11.8× |
| Africa | 30,370,000 km² | n/a | n/a |
Old maps drew Nicaragua at about 137,152 km². The truth is 130,373 km², a difference of 5% that school atlases carried for centuries.