Who was the greatest explorer/traveler?

I'll go for the first Polynesian to set foot on Hawaii.

Marco Polo, for nostalgic reasons.
I remember being incredibly fascinated by his story when I was a child.

Here is my list:

1. Neil Armstrong: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

2. Marco Polo: Opened the European curiosity for the East and spurred later expeditions of Spanish and Portuguese explorerers.

3. Zhang Qian: His exploits helped to open the Silk Road and establish a linkage between Europe, North Africa, and Persia with the Orient.

4. Vasco da Gama: His successful voyage from Portugal and back secured a sea route for the spice trade and achieved what European explorers since Marco Polo longed: a direct route to India and the Orient by sea.

5. Magellan: We all know

6. Columbus: Common knowledge

7. Ibn Battuta: Lots of milage

 

Edited by poirot

I can't help but feel that Mr Polo is slightly over rated.
Many things attributed to him are popular myths, for example, the introduction to pasta (or perhaps merely noodles) to Italy is out, Arabic documents in Sicily are describing it centuries earlier, and there are depictions of it dating back to the Etruscans.
He is typicly credited with being the 'First European to have visited China', even though Greeks had been there before him.
He may not even have traveled as far as many claim him to have, but merely described those places having learned about them from other people.
He is credited with introducing various bits and bobs to Europe that were actualy introduced by trade and contact with Muslim countries.
There are even claims that much of his accounts may have simply been taken from Persian sources and translated.

Not to knock the man down too much, but there is a lot of iffyness surrounding him IMHO. I feel he has been elevated to something more than he really was. Much like Columbus was in the immediate post indipendance era in the Americas.

Columbus
Though he was not the first one in America, he was the one who opened an entire continent for the old world.