There have been threads about longest flights etc. - but they are almost all in an east-west direction. How about north-south (or reasonably close)?
Air: longest N/S nonstop flight? Toronto-Buenos Aires is 11.5 hours. London-Johannesburg is 11 hours. Tokyo-Sydney is 9.5 hours. (I’m excluding over-the-Pole flights).
Train: longest North/South trip within a single country - Adelaide-Darwin (Australia) is 1851 miles (2979 km)? Any other longer north/south trips covering multiple countries? (Canada-US-Mexico? Do any trains cross the US/Mexico border?)
Longest north/south drive anywhere in the world? Alaska to Panama? Somewhere in Europe to somewhere in Africa?
Not The Same Thing, But Thought I’d Mention It Department: There is a documentary series called, “Long Way…,” starring best pals Ewan “Star Wars” McGregor and Charlie “Excalibur” Boorman where they motorcycle across vast areas. The first installment (“… Around”) they biked from London thru Europe, Asia and the US to NY. The second (“… Down”) they biked from Scotland to Cape Town. The third (“… Up”) has just been released and they motor from Argentina to LA on prototype electric cycles. I can’t wait to see this; the series is highly recommended (at least, by me). Apologies for the lengthy commercial.
Interesting - I never realized that there’s no road at all between Colombia and Panama.
And significant opposition to one being built, for various reasons described in the article. Notably, the lack of access prevents the spread of foot-and-mouth disease into Central and N America. And drug trafficking, of course.
Right. Vehicles have crossed the Darien Gap a handful of times, but it basically requires hacking out your own road, rafting across rivers, and winching through mud.
These days, for Panama illegal immigration from Colombia is a big motivation in not building a road through, as well as the drug trade. Even so, many immigrants come in by foot. Panama has a much wealthier economy than Colombia, and many people come for jobs. It’s also a through route for people trying to reach the US from all over the world, including Asians, Somalis and other Africans, and others.
There are direct flights from Santiago to Frankfurt (about 7520 miles), Amsterdam (about 7450 miles), as well as London and Paris (both over 7000 miles). All of them are slightly more north-south than they are east-west. I use the bearing at the midpoint of the great circle route as the criterion. From Santiago to Frankfurt, that bearing is about 35 degrees, meaning 35 degrees east of true north and 55 degrees north of east.
It seems there are nonstop flights between Cape Town and Newark (15 hours), and of course European destinations like London, Frankfurt and Schiphol. There are direct flights between Sydney and Vancouver (14hrs15). There was a non-stop flight from Sydney to London, but whether (what with Covid) it’ll become a regular schedule, who knows?
My boss once (or twice?) took a flight from New England to Sydney (stopover at either LA or somewhere in Asia?), had a business meeting, then took another flight to London, where we also had business in the area. Usually he stayed a week in one location but this was more “passing through”. I never knew what time zone he was, nor he.
Michael Palin did “Pole to Pole”, following as close as possible with the 30-degree longitude, as well as a couple other travels. I remember seeing the show.
To add the US has 3 well known (very) long distance hiking trails, the Appalachian Trail (AT), the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and the Continental Divide Trail They mostly wind North/South (though the AT does a fair amount of W-E as well, though it is known as a NS trail), and are much more popular then some others extreme length trails such as the Great Eastern Trail (also N-S) and the American Discovery Trail (E-W).
Now a large part of that evidently to do with the 3 mountain ranges, and the tendency of people to hiking in those areas, but the main ones that people use for long distance hiking are N-S trails by far.
For the story of the team that set a new world’s record for “Farthest South to farthest North by road in the Americas,” read Tim Cahill’s first-person account Road Fever. 23.5 days from Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay.
