Is exploration of a new continent really something of the past?

One of my friends is taking a history class on the Latin America. She was explaining some of the early explorations to me today. One in particular was a voyage by Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca. His ship crashed in what is present day Florida. Once he was shipwrecked he was forced to explore the continent and befriend the native Americans that occupied the land. This seems scary, to be on stranded on a foreign country, not knowing the language of the natives, unfamiliar with the culture, and unsure of how to get by. Vaca traveled across the country with the Native Americans and soon enough learned how to survive while exploring the vast continent. Every time I hear stories similar to this one I am amazed and extremely impressed that there were people brave enough to complete these expeditions. My friend and I marveled in the courage that it must have took. We determined that when one saw foreign foods the only to find out if they were eatable was to try them to determine thier effect. We said that we couldn't imagine this.

However, five minutes into our conversation, as we were thinking of all the challenges these voyagers would have had to overcome, we both paused and looked at each other, and realized that these do not sound very different from the experience we had this past summer, when we both lived in Madrid, Spain for a month. We then laughed, because we speak in such a glorified and amazed way about these past explorers but our experience was not remarkably different besides the fact that we knew that there was civilization in the continent we chose to voyage to, and we were able to fly. However, we still needed to adjust to a completely different culture and way of living, different time schedule, different people, different foods, and a different language. After a week or two we had adjusted quite nicely and were able to discern which foods we liked and which ones upset our stomachs, whether the water was alright to drink, were it was clean to buy food, and how to learn how to survive in the bustling Madrid city where everything was in Spanish. The experience was fun and exciting and we learned so much about the Spanish culture and way of life. Besides working and studying during the week, we were able to travel around Spain on the weekends, just like Vaca, learning so much with each footstep we took. Overall, the experience of traveling abroad is not that different from the early explorations. Are we not still exploring a new culture, people, and way of life, that we do not know anything about?