[campbellmorgan]

I never thought I would see this on HN! I also highly recommend reading (an abridged version of) this, maybe in tandem with a well annotated version of The Lusiads by Camoes. From our modern, connected multicultural world, I find there's nothing more engrossing than witnessing this "discovery" through the eyes of those comparatively monocultural generations. In a similar vein, I have also been meaning to read some of Ibn Battuta's travels which strike me as a Berber angle on a similar journey.

[scottlocklin]

I'm saving Camoes; gonna read Gaspar Correa "The three voyages of Vasco da Gama: and his viceroyalty" with that one (it looked good, but Fernao Mentes Minto is more of its own standalone thing). Most crazy thing I've yet read from Iberia is Captain Alonso Contreras Life; obviously not in Portuguese, and not too much about exploration, but it's just insane.

Ibn Battuta looks pretty cool; thanks for mentioning.

[charlysl]

> Most crazy thing I've yet read from Iberia is Captain Alonso Contreras Life; obviously not in Portuguese, and not too much about exploration, but it's just insane.

The most insane and extreme adventure I have ever read is Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios. Marooned in Florida with a few companions and one slave, and then himself enslaved by native americans (he famously quipped that his poor slave became a slave's slave), they ended up being the first europeans known to walk the US coast to coast, as a chaman with his entourage. A very resourceful man. His observations of the many american tribes he came across were a first, he had an anthropologist's outlook. A short but intense book.