Been there, done that.

I´ve always wondered how the Conquistadors could, with so few soldiers and so far from their base of support, force the natives of the western hemisphere into submission. The Aztecs or Incas had always lived in the deserts and mountains. You´d think they would have been able to run circles around the invaders and the Spanish would have floundered in the foreign, inhospitable terrain. Now...after almost two months crossing Spain from South to North and East to West...I have a different idea of who the Spanish were.

Plop a Spaniard down in New Mexico and he might easily think he was in Cuenca as in the photo above. We´ve seen wide, arid high desert; canyon country; mountains and plains. There is even a place along the Mediterranean coast where some 150 westerns were filmed in the 1960´s and 1970´s (most importantly Sergio Leone´s ´Spaghetti Westerns´...yoo hoo!). The boys in royal armor didn´t come from the medieval streets of Seville or Toledo. I suspect they were more than familar with the canyons and hills and knew how to hunt and make their way in dry, rugged terrain. The fact that they had that armor and those guns didn´t hurt either but, by and large, they probably felt right at home. Bummer for the Indians.