A Mesa IS a familiar desert site. It is, essentially, a mountain, with the top cut off, so it's "flat" on top, like a table. Mesa, Arizona is as flat a place as I've seen, short of a dry lake bed, like murock or the great salt lake. North of the Phoenix valley (which mesa, az is in), there is a road called table mesa road. everytime my friends and I drive past it on our way to sedona, there's a debate as to wheter we should call it table mesa, mesa mesa, table table, or mesa table road. We tend to end up calling it table table, just because it sounds the funniest. ( I won't get into the immigration discussions it's led to.)
BTW, being that it IS a spanish word, the only correct pronunciation is "MAY-suh", but I don't bust people balls about stuff like that. Only when people say stuff WAY wrong like "CUMF-ter-bul".
