 In Pre-Columbian times, the native peoples in what is now Costa Rica were divided in two cultural areas due to its geographical location in the Intermediate Area, between the Mesoamerican and the Andean cultural regions.The northwest of the country, the Nicoya Peninsula, was the southernmost point of Mesoamerican cultural influence when the Spanish conquerors came in the sixteenth century.The Nicoya culture was the largest "cacicazgo" on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.