chuso007

Nahh... That's how we drive here. It's a lot more fun too.

Puente de Ventas over the M30 (I think), what's wrong about it?

Thanks RM

Long time no see...

Would a supersharp knife work better on that? I've never tried...

After many years, I came to the conclusion that the best knife is one that you don't mind (much) losing, strong enough for most jobs and with a spike to untie knots. Shackle opener is a plus, but not a must. I use these (or similar, brand not important): Oh, and one thing I learnt from an old Galician fisherman, sharpen it rough, he use to do it on the sidewalk or some concrete surface so it cuts through ropes better.

RIP. I loved his movies as a kid...

You'll hear/read a lot more about Drake here in Galicia than about Urdaneta or any other sailor of his time, I'll tell you that... He pretty much destroyed Vigo (then a small and defenseless fishing village with less than 600 people)and Pontevedra with an overwhelming superiority of men and ships, burnig cities and churches to the ground, but his defeat in La Coruña (a great read by the way) was pretty humilliating and is still celebrated here. The "Counter Armada" (or Drake-Norris expedition) led by Drake was a bigger fiasco for England than the loss of the Spanish Armada was to Spain (and with no storms to blame). He was supposed to attack Santander, La Coruña, conquer the Azores and to put Antonio de Crato on the Portuguese Throne. He was defeated first in La Coruña, then in Lisbon later in the Azores and finally chased by the Spaniards on his way back to England. He lost more lives and ships than Spain the year before, it was the second largest defeat in British naval history after the defeat in Cartagena de Indias in 1741.

As usual, it was lack of money... Don't know if they made it, but they definitely knew about it. Plus, don't forget that the Crown of Portugal was on the king of Spain's head from 1580 until 1640. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-15/rare-documents-unveiled-showing-spanish-quest-to-find-australia/4890228

Oh the British historiography... Ruy López de Villalobos was in Hawaii in 1543, and many charts were published since, being the oldest from 1551, signed by Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian and French cartographers, in which you can see an archipelago located in points near the place they occupy on the globe, and it can not be argued that they represent other groups of islands, since there are hundreds of miles from Hawaii to find new land, therefore their identification does not harbor any doubt. Cook states in his diary that he did not find such islands, which he cites, since they were located on the charts he was carrying (misplaced by ten degrees in latitude); he places them in a new chart he draws, saying that he did not find them but instead he has seen these new islands, which he renames, re-baptizing them and appropriating his discovery as if nodoby (European) had been there before. Again, bloody pirates, without the Spanish cartography seized in Manila in 1762 Cook probably would've never reached Hawaii, nor many other places he "discovered" In fact, the Spanish galleons dominated trans-Pacific trade for two and a half centuries, the same time that has passed since Cook's voyages, and it was Spanish expeditions that discovered the route between Asia and America. Spanish navigators were those who discovered the Marianas, the Carolinas and the Philippines in the northern Pacific, as well as the Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Solomons and New Guinea in the South Pacific. Spanish expeditions in search of Terra Australis also discovered the Pitcairn Islands and the New Hebrides, now Vanuatu, in the 17th century.

Wel of course...

That's hunting, the other video looks more like harvesting...

Don't get your panties all in a bunch Jack, Mendaña's cartographer was Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, one of the brightest men of his time: mariner, cosmographer, mathematician, writer, soldier, historian, philologist, astronomer, scientist, humanist, explorer and a conqueror. It's pretty bold to assume that Cook would've done any better with XVI's century technology and without all the knowledge he got from those who were there before him. And yes, Brits were always more into stealing the gold than mining it. Bloody pirates. Ever heard of Malaspina?

But the history of the conquest of the Pacific Ocean by the Spanish is absolutely amazing. The first time a Spanish ship tried to cross back (one of Magallanes's ships) was in 1522, it took 43 years before Andrés de Urdaneta, whos was a brilliant scientist and cosmographer, found the way back (going far North) opening a route used by the Manila fleet for over 200 years. Waaaaaaay before Cook. Anyway I envy how Brits appreciate their own history, I wish we did the same in Spain.

Well of course, we all come from Africa, you know? We are obviously talking about modern times, I was just picking a bit on Jack...