Learning is a strong reason why people love to travel; sometimes it's more educational than a college class. You may take joy in ordering a meal when you don't speak the language or trying to find your way in a foreign city. 

What made the first explorer want to go further than they could see? Adventure yes but curiosity too. The need for food and return trade also drove people to explore.

For individuals it's no different. Advertising draws your attention to destinations. A sun soaked beach, a rain forest, a river or ocean cruise, to walk the Great Wall of China, to swim at the Great Barrier Reef, a safari drive in Africa, to look in awe at the gardens of Versailles. Lovers of art have an absolute treasure chest of galleries to choose from the world over. The world is the size of a pea, finitely speaking.

Christopher Columbus a seasoned sailor from Italy went to Portugal then Spain, having participated in several trading voyages in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. On expeditions to Africa Columbus was to gain a fountain of knowledge of the Atlantic currants flowing east to west from the Canary Islands.

The Asian islands near China and India were fabled for their spices and gold, making them an attractive destination for Europeans. However when Constantinople fell to Muslin domination the trade routes through the Middle East made travel eastward difficult. Columbus devised a route to sail west across the Atlantic to reach India believing it would be quicker and safer.

While Columbus accepted the world being round or sphere shaped he got the distance of the circumference completely incorrect. Other scholars of the time and earlier reckoned it to be about 15,000 miles, he estimated 6,000 miles at most. None of them were near the correct distance of 24,000 miles.

Having been financed by the then King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain in return for riches of gold and spices he set sail from the Canary Islands part of Spain off the coast off the coast of Africa with three ships. Land was sighted after 36 days sailing. The island was the Bahamas.  Because of the people's colour he thought they were Indians. He claimed the inland for Spain and continued on to Cuba thinking it to be China. Returning back to Spain he got a tumultuous welcome. He was to carry out a total of four expeditions over the next 10 years. With each voyage his welcomes were becoming less hospitable, stories of the abominations committed by the Spaniards from the New World were filtering homeward.

Motivation to travel to the North and South poles were a test of mans endurance. The Norwegian Ronald Amundsen was the first to reach the South Pole in 1911. He had his sights set on the North Pole but the American Robert Peary had got there in September 1909. Amundsen changed his mind and headed south. The expeditions to the Antarctic became a challenge for these explorers. Robert Scott was a British explorer, who had already tried to reach the South Pole years before hand. He was ready to go again. Amundsen and Scott were rivals. Scott was ill equipped using ponies and dogs. Ponies eat more; they are bigger and have more difficulty through the snow and ice. Amundsen used dogs only a total of 97. He had also got going on the trip earlier. Amundsen got to the South Pole and back with all of his party. Scott got there a little over a month after Amundsen. The sad thing of there return, they all lost their lives. Others, who made the journey, were Shackleton and Wild. Edmund Hillary of New Zealander was the first man to conquer the three poles, climb Mount Everest 1953, South Pole 1958 and the North Pole in the company of Neil Armstrong 1985.

Travel broadens the mind a person once said. To travel, we experiment, we explore, we learn, we make friends and most of all we see the world is big but small when you plan to discover it.