Manila, meet
Mato Grosso.

Luzon lands on western Mato Grosso. Manila, Quezon City and the rest of Metro Manila come down around Conquista d’Oeste, near the Bolivian border (Manila’s antipode is 57 km from it), and the north of Luzon crosses into Bolivia: Baguio faces the country near San Matías, and Tuguegarao lands near Puerto Quijarro, on the edge of the Pantanal.

The Visayas fall on northern Mato Grosso. Cebu lands near Alta Floresta, Iloilo near Juara, Bacolod near Tabaporã; and the soy town of Sorriso lands 5 km from Lavezares, in Northern Samar. Mindanao comes down in southern Pará, along the Cuiabá–Santarém highway and the Tapajós: Davao and Cotabato near Novo Progresso, Cagayan de Oro and Iligan near Castelo dos Sonhos, Zamboanga near Jacareacanga. Palau reaches further east, to Maranhão and Piauí.

The big cities of central Brazil miss. Brasília faces the Philippine Sea, 667 km from the nearest land; Manaus faces the Celebes Sea; Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in Bolivia, the South China Sea. Cuiabá is a sloppy sandwich, 159 km short of land. The Brazilian end of this corridor is farms, forest and the soy towns strung along one highway.

Every city in the Philippines above 300,000 people and every regional centre, and Palau’s two towns. On the other side, the cities of central and northern Brazil above 100,000 and the state capitals, with the cities of Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay and Venezuela, each listed if its other slice lands in or off the Philippines or Palau and within 300 km of land, or it is a capital or a city of a million. Exact means land opposite land at the city’s own point; where the other slice would get wet, the table gives the nearest spot from which an exact sandwich is possible.

Two farm towns of Mato Grosso have a twin in the Visayas: their centres are less than a kilometre from the antipode of a Philippine town, so bread in the middle of each is an exact Earth sandwich.

1. Novo Horizonte do NorteMato Grosso⇄DaoWestern Visayas515 m
2. Santa CarmemMato Grosso⇄PagsanghanEastern Visayas986 m

Distances are between the centre points GeoNames gives for each town. Sandwich Law measures from where the bread actually lies, plus both phones’ GPS accuracy, so check your two spots on the map before the day.

A sandwich’s elevation bonus is the height of one end plus the height of the other (Sandwich Law § 1.4). The Board scores it the way the map shows it: from the average height of the ground over cells about 20 km across, so every spot in a cell scores the same and you only need to be in the right cell, not on the summit. These are the corridor’s best cells, one per area, each with dry land at both ends.

1. +1,920 m18 km from Wao (Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao)cell average 1,640 m63 km from Novo Progresso (Pará)cell average 280 m
2. +1,840 m3 km from Monamon (Cordillera)cell average 1,720 m96 km from San Matías (Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia)cell average 120 m
3. +1,840 m6 km from Kibangay (Northern Mindanao)cell average 1,560 m24 km from Castelo dos Sonhos (Pará)cell average 280 m
4. +1,520 m23 km from Padong (Ilocos)cell average 920 m85 km from Roboré (Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia)cell average 600 m
5. +1,520 m19 km from Baco (Mimaropa)cell average 1,080 m41 km from Sapezal (Mato Grosso)cell average 440 m

The Philippine mountains do all the work here: the Brazilian and Bolivian ends are low plateau and plain, a few hundred metres up. The best cell pairs the highlands of Lanao del Sur near Wao, at an average of 1,640 m, with southern Pará near Novo Progresso.

The window. Both slices must go down within five minutes of the same UTC instant (Sandwich Law § 2.1). The sandwich lobby holds you to it: when the first slice lands, the other side has five minutes.

The clocks. The Philippines keep UTC+8 all year. Mato Grosso, Rondônia and Bolivia keep UTC−4, 12 hours behind Manila; Pará and Maranhão keep UTC−3, 11 hours behind. Nobody changes their clocks.

The light. Two exactly opposite points are never in daylight together: sunrise at one end is sunset at the other. The atmosphere bends a little sunlight over the horizon, so twice a day, on a clear flat horizon, the sun is up at both ends for about seven minutes. Put the bread down then and both photographs get golden light.

The seasons. Plan around the Philippine typhoon season and the Brazilian rains; the unpaved roads of southern Pará are easiest in the dry months.

The geometry is the easy part; the hard part is a person at the other end, and the site does not match strangers. Write in English and Portuguese, or Filipino and Portuguese, with your town and its antipode. The Brazilian towns in the tables are young farm towns, and a message to the town hall (the prefeitura) or a local community page is a reasonable first step.

Then open an attempt in the sandwich lobby. It gives you a code and a link to send through whatever channel you already share, shows both slices when they arrive, and runs the five-minute window. Almost all of the Brazilian side is private farmland or forest, so put the bread on public ground, a roadside or a town square, or ask the owner. The exact grade allows a kilometre of slack, which is usually enough to find somewhere you are allowed to stand.

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