Oceania

In a few days I fly to Australia with Aya. This is to be our honeymoon. First we are going to Cairns on Australia's NE coast, then a few days in Sydney. After that she is coming back to Japan because she has to work early. I am going on to New Zealand for a few days more.
I was thinking about this trip and feeling that there was something special, like some kind of marker that I would be passing by going here. At first I thought that it was going to make my 19th and 20th countries that I have traveled to, breaking me out of the teens. So I got out a piece of scrap paper and jotted down what countries I have been to. That was not it, they will be 18th and 19th. That seems like a lot when I say it, but when you compare it to people like Charles Veley (http://www.mosttraveledpeople.com/) it's not that much.

Then I thought this will be my longest flight ever. It is quite a ways from Japan to Australia since unlike a lot of other flights the pilots don't have the "by the pole" option that has saved me so much time before. This flight will actually not even be close to the longest, that was Tokyo to Minneapolis at about 10,000 miles. So it's not the 20th country and it's not the longest flight, but I thought it might be since it's in the souther hemisphere and... oh yes, they are in the southern hemisphere!

This will be my first trip south of the Equator. First time, that sounds strange to me considering that, you know, there is this whole half of the planet that I have never set foot it. There are some reasons for that like the difference in landmass between the northern hemisphere and the southern, roughly 2/3 of the continents' landmass is in the north. When you consider that there are also population considerations. About 85% of the world's population lives in the northern hemisphere.That is quite a difference.

So there you have it. I am headed to the other half of the globe and a new continent! I remember that my grandfather said there was some ceremony that he did with his ship mates when they crossed the equator on their destroyer in WWII. Something about making a gift to Neptune. I wonder, if I am flying, if I should give a gift to Jupiter instead.