But it was Columbus, Vespucci, Cabot, Verazzano, Hudson etc. who had at least a semi-methodical approach, the backing of nation-states and big business who finally got the New World show on the road. They also had the printing press by then, the 16th C answer to the Internet.
What always amazes me is that the strongest rigging on their ships which carried them thousands of miles, wasn't as tough as the rigging on my Thistle sailboat! To top it off, they had no real idea of where TF they were in those days, no charts and with no reliable way to fix longitude. Remember too, that we have forgotten all the explorers and colonists who never made it over ... or back.
But forget all that. Join me in celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day, won't you? After all, their cultures of incessant intertribal warfare, followed by human sacrifices, enslavement of the conquered, cannibalism, etc should make us all celebrate them in a politically correct way, because it would cause them great loss of self-esteem to point out that they were bloody frickin' heathens. And they did give us the potato.
The Portuguese probably knew what Columbus did not, that there was an uncivilized land not Asia, a relatively short distance across the Atlantic. Certain they did not waste much time after Columbus came back, sending an expedition to claim Brazil, before heading east around the Cape. By that time they had already got the Pope—a Spanish popes, BTW— to split the territorial rights with Spain. When Cortez finally struck gold, literally, there must have been some unhappy people in Lisbon.