In reply to ripper:
Was this based, however loosely, on Orellana's voyage to and down the Amazon?
All those pre-modern journeys, right up to Darwin in the Beagle, where people didn't know what they were going into but somehow got there, and sometimes somehow got back and told the rest of us about it, they are what I think of most when I think of adventures.
What was it like to be one of the Vikings in the first voyage that got to Iceland? Or Marco Polo heading east, or a Polynesian heading out into the Pacific?