How to Make an Earth Sandwich

Filed in archive Travel Tips on June 21, 2006

Internet video, uh, journalist? ZeFrank recently issued a challenge to his devotees: sandwich the Earth between two pieces of bread.

The concept is simple: someone at one side of of the planet lays a piece of bread on the ground; at the same time, someone on the exact opposite side of the world also lays a piece of bread on the ground, thus creating the world's first Earth sandwich.

Its actually surprisingly difficult; as readers quickly discovered, most of the US and a large part of Europe are opposed by large bodies of water, making sandwiching quite difficult. The endeavour is made easier by the very cool Opposites Tool which lets you use a Google Maps utility to navigate to a location one one side of the globe whilst seeing its opposite mapped in the other pane.



While messing about with the map and discovering that I could not, in fact, help to make an Earth sandwich without the help of a seafaring captain in the South Pacific, I became intigued with the idea of finding two opposite locations that would make fun travel destinations.

After quite a while and a lot of scrolling, I've come up with the pairing on Cordoba, Spain and Hamilton, New Zealand. Cordoba is a fabulous city and one of my favourite places in Spain; I know virtually nothing about Hamilton, but at least I've heard of it. Thus is won out over my other choice of Toledo and the Ruahine Forest Park, which sounds suspiciously as though it would involve camping.

Anyway, the idea of the Earth sandwich caught on, with extensive online coverage and pieces in The New York Times and on NPR. And lo, an Earth sandwich has now been made.