basemap for plot contour map in python

1) the page with extensive explanations of basemap is:
http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/basemap/doc/html/api/basemap_api.html

2) a page with useful examples:
http://matplotlib.github.com/basemap/users/examples.html

3) In the python code, these lines are needed to call the basemap

from mpl_toolkits.basemap import Basemap
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt