HONDELATTE RACONTE
Sarah Marquis is a backpack adventurer. Since the age of 20, she travels the world. In 2018, she embarked on an expedition to Tasmania, in search of the Tasmanian tiger, a species officially extinct in the 1930s. The explorer tells this expedition in a book, I woke up the tiger , and Tuesday at Christophe's place Hondelatte.
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44,000 kilometers traveled
Since she was 20, Sarah Marquis has been traveling around the world with her backpack as her only companion. In 25 years, it has traveled the equivalent of a round the globe: 44,000 kilometers. In 2018, it is in a new adventure that it starts. Head to Tasmania, this small island-state off the south coast of Australia. Sarah Marquis will search for the Tasmanian tiger, a species officially extinct since the 1930s. But since then, peasants, tourists and islanders have seen it. The explorer wants to elucidate this mystery. "My mission as a explorer is to be the bridge between nature and the human," she says at the microphone of Europe 1.
The smell of the tiger
Tasmania is one of the most wild lands on the planet. The goal of Sarah Marquis is to go up the west coast, from south to north. The adventurer arrives in a "green hell", under the torrential rain. Sarah Marquis walks through a dense forest surrounded by mud slides. One morning, she wakes up and in her nostrils, she is sure: the smell of the tiger. She has never seen it but she has read it and she does not doubt her sense of smell. "There is not such a smell on this planet: it's really something very special," says the explorer. He is not far, she feels it.
"It's an animal that does not return to the same place"
A few days later, she decides to set up her tent at the very spot where the last Tasmanian tiger was captured. During a fishing trip, she hears a loud noise in the distance. Sarah Marquis raises her eyes and sees a bird that wants to escape a predator. The predator in question? She has hardly seen it, but for her, no doubt, it is indeed the Tasmanian tiger. Like all those who have seen her since the 1930s, Sarah Marquis has no proof, no photo or recording, only the strength of her conviction. "Why did we see the Tasmanian tiger without pictures, because it's an animal that does not return to the same place, that's what makes it very mysterious," she says. .
"An explorer is someone who goes beyond his limits"
The explorer continues her adventure, in an increasingly difficult nature, cohabiting with mosquitoes, tiger-snakes, leeches. But his expedition will know a sudden stop. One day, she makes a heavy fall in a ravine. Sarah Marquis is sure to have dislocated her shoulder. She ends up joining her medical team by satellite phone. The more hours pass, the more his arm hurts. She is evacuated by helicopter, verdict: the head of the humerus is broken. Six weeks of immobilization are necessary. Sarah Marquis will only allow seven days off before leaving to complete her expedition, with only one arm fully valid. "An explorer is someone who goes beyond his limits", she justifies. The adventurer will end her expedition, with a conviction, to have "awakened the tiger".