Earth Sandwich

International Sandwich Authority · Open map

Where a sandwich
is possible.

Two slices of bread at exactly opposite points of the Earth make one sandwich, but only where there is land at both ends. Most land has ocean on its far side. This map shows the places that don’t. It is free to reuse: put it in a lesson, a post or an article, and link back.

World map in the Equal Earth projection. Land whose exact opposite point is also land is shaded dark green: much of Spain and Portugal, New Zealand, eastern China and Mongolia, Argentina and Chile, much of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and parts of Brazil and Venezuela, spots of Hawaii and Botswana, and parts of Greenland, the Canadian Arctic and Antarctica. Lighter greens show land within 50, 200 and 500 km of a perfect match; the rest of the land has sea on its far side.

The world, in an equal-area projection so the green is in true proportion to the land. The numbers mark the five corridors where sandwiches get made.

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13.5%of the world’s land has land at its exact antipode
3.9%of the whole surface, sea included
34.5%of land is within 200 km of a perfect match: a sloppy sandwich or better
55.6%of land is within 500 km, a picnic away
PLATES 2–5

The corridors, up close

Each close-up is a pair of panels at one scale. The right panel is centred on the exact antipode of the left panel’s centre, so every green zone on one side reappears on the other, mirrored north to south. The red dot is a city on one side and its antipode on the other.

Spain & Portugal ↔ New Zealand

Two maps at the same scale: Spain and Portugal on the left, New Zealand on the right. Dark green exact zones cover central Spain and Galicia, and almost all of New Zealand’s North Island and the north of the South Island. Madrid is marked, and its antipode in the North Island.

Madrid’s antipode is in the North Island, about 30 km from Dannevirke. The dark spot in southern France, near Le Vigan, is the Chatham Islands’ twin. Read the corridor guide →

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China & Mongolia ↔ Argentina & Chile

Two maps at the same scale: eastern China, Mongolia and Korea on the left, Argentina and Chile on the right. Most of eastern China and Mongolia, and most of Argentina and Chile, are dark green exact zones. Beijing is marked, and its antipode in Argentina.

Beijing’s antipode is in northern Patagonia, about 80 km from General Conesa, Argentina. Eastern China and Mongolia sit almost entirely opposite Argentina and Chile. Read the corridor guide →

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Southeast Asia ↔ Colombia, Ecuador & Peru

Two maps at the same scale: Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines on the left; Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and western Brazil on the right. Sumatra, Borneo, the Malay Peninsula, Cambodia, southern Vietnam and the Philippines are largely exact zones, and their outlines reappear, mirrored, in South America. Quito is marked, and its antipode in Sumatra.

Quito’s antipode is in Sumatra, about 40 km from Pekanbaru. Borneo’s outline reappears upside down in the Amazon. Read the three corridor guides →

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Hawaii ↔ Botswana

Two maps at the same scale: the Hawaiian Islands on the left, northern Botswana and Namibia on the right. The main Hawaiian islands are exact zones, and their mirrored outlines appear as exact zones in the Kalahari, ringed by deli and sloppy bands. Honolulu is marked, and its antipode.

Honolulu’s antipode is in the Kalahari, about 35 km from Dekar, Botswana. Every main Hawaiian island has a twin of the same shape in the Kalahari, upside down. Read the corridor guide →

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USE IT

Free to reuse, with a link

All the images on this page are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). You may copy, print, crop, recolour and publish them, commercially or not. The one condition is credit, and the credit we ask for is a link to earth-sandwich.com wherever the image appears. In print, the address is enough.

The land shapes come from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence. The images are drawn from that data, and the ODbL asks that the OpenStreetMap credit stay with them; it is printed on every image and included above. If you extract the outlines from an SVG to use as data, that data stays under the ODbL rather than CC BY.

METHOD

How the map is made

Find your own antipode Read Sandwich Law