He has explored the wildest places on Earth on his own. His last challenge? Following in the footsteps of an explorer who died in the Amazon jungle.
Eliott Schonfeld-Aventurier told Brut nature about this life-changing experience.
Eliott Schonfeld-Aventurier told Brut nature about this life-changing experience.
Category
🏖
TravelTranscript
00:00It's really a very, very intense fight mentally to be able to move forward every day.
00:12I don't know if it's because I'm following the tracks of a dead person or not, certainly anyway, but in fact I'm afraid.
00:20And it's pretty rare that I'm afraid on an expedition.
00:31It was the hardest expedition. Sometimes I was really afraid to end up like him,
00:37but it allowed me to discover the jungle, which is the most beautiful and wonderful place I've ever set foot in.
01:00There's a place I've never dared to go to, it's the wildest place in the world and it's the Amazon.
01:28And a few months ago, I came across a book that changed my life.
01:32This book is called Adventure in Guyana. It was written in 1949 by a 23-year-old explorer named Raymond Moffrey.
01:39And it's his logbook, which tells of the challenge that was imposed every day,
01:44namely to cross all of French Guiana alone to Mount Umukumak,
01:48in the hope of discovering a tribe of Indians never approached.
01:52Raymond Moffrey never came back from this expedition. He disappeared into the jungle and we never saw him again.
01:58And if an Amerindian Indian hadn't found his lost logbook in the middle of the jungle,
02:04we would never have known what had happened to him.
02:07And once I had finished this book, I was determined.
02:10I was going to finish his expedition that was said to be impossible.
02:14I was going to try to finish his dream.
02:21Day 2
02:38Now we're stuck in the current.
02:41And it's super powerful, there's no passage.
02:44The only way is to try to hang from liana to liana.
02:49It's been 10 days since I went up the Waki River.
02:51And going up a river is really crazy, because we're constantly against the current.
02:55And so we constantly have to fight not to fall back, so that the current doesn't take us away.
03:00And on top of that, from the 10th day, the river started to shrink.
03:05And it was literally strangled by the jungle.
03:09Sometimes I couldn't even see the water,
03:11because it was covered by a lot of plants and all the possible vegetation.
03:18Day 3
03:28One of the worst things that could have happened, happened.
03:31Everything sank.
03:33I managed to save the pirogue, but two things disappeared.
03:40It's the ram and the machete.
03:43I'm a little...
03:45I'm a little taken by shock, because I was scared.
03:50It was horrible, because without the ram, I can't do anything.
03:54It's my engine, I can't go on, I can't go back.
03:57It was really a problem, and I understood that I had to build one.
04:01Except that I didn't have a machete, so I had to...
04:04I could only count on a small knife that I had kept.
04:08And I found a liana, and I didn't believe it,
04:11but since it was the only option, I started carving.
04:15And for hours and hours I carved, and after 6 hours,
04:18I held in my hand a ram, roughly carved, but that worked.
04:23It looks a bit like a ram.
04:30Every day I read Raymond Moffret's book,
04:33and it's crazy, because day after day,
04:35we went through exactly the same fears, the same joys, the same emotions.
04:40We saw the same things, because in 70 years,
04:42this part of the jungle has changed very little.
04:45And so I really felt like I was doing this expedition on his behalf.
04:50And I talked to him, and I often read sentences that he had written
04:54to give himself courage, and it gave me courage again.
04:57I know this rock.
04:59Moffret talks about it.
05:01The Indians who accompanied him prayed for a long time.
05:04I pass by caressing the stone at the tip of my fingers.
05:07The same stone that touched him 70 years ago,
05:10on December 5, 1949.
05:13When I was standing in the jungle, the problem was really the lianas,
05:17which tried to grip me on all sides, and which prevented me from taking a step.
05:21And sometimes I did, I don't know, 500 meters in two hours.
05:25It was really difficult to move forward.
05:28I confess that these last two nights, I've had a few panic attacks.
05:35The problem is the food.
05:37I don't have enough, I eat too much, and my body is starting to weaken.
05:45Unlike Alaska, where I managed to fish, where I managed to welcome mushrooms,
05:49bays, where I had autonomy, where I was able to do what I wanted to do,
05:54I never really managed to fish in the Amazon.
05:57I think I had to catch five fish at most,
06:00and I had to catch a few fruits, like a few times, but it was quite rare.
06:05Simply because the jungle requires more knowledge
06:10than the other places I've been to before.
06:13I couldn't read the river, I didn't understand where the fish were.
06:25I feel that my body needs to eat, and it doesn't have enough energy.
06:31I'm losing too much weight.
06:37I had a little over five kilos of food at the beginning of the expedition,
06:40so I was eating a bowl of rice or pasta a day, and above all, I ate very little.
06:46And that was a real worry, the food, during the whole expedition.
06:50Because that's what probably cost Raymond Moffray his life.
06:53So it was always in my head, and at the end of the expedition I lost 15 kilos.
07:00We found Raymond Moffray's bookcase here,
07:03and by reading his book we understand what happened to him in this place.
07:07He tried for 10 days, he tried for 20 days,
07:11and he was still not able to catch fish.
07:14So we went to see him again, and he told us that he had caught a little fish.
07:18And then he told us that he'd caught a little fish,
07:21and that he'd caught a little fish, and that he'd caught a little fish.
07:24So we went to see him again, and we went to see him again,
07:27He tried for 10 days to leave this place
07:30He tried to build a raft, but it didn't work
07:32It was too heavy, he failed after 100 meters
07:36Then he tried to build a pirogue, but he didn't have the tools
07:39And the problem was that he couldn't hunt anymore
07:42So he started to lose weight, he started to weaken a lot
07:45So after a while he understood that his only chance to survive
07:49Was to go swimming to the next village
07:51So he wrote a last word for his parents in his notebook
07:55He left all his stuff, and he left on January 13th, 1950
07:59And he probably died 2 or 3 days after he went swimming
08:03When I arrived at this place, it was very moving
08:06Because I knew everything that happened
08:08And at the same time, it was quite scary
08:11Because I knew that in order to not end up like him
08:14I had to get to where he failed
08:17So I also started to build a raft with my little knife
08:19And for days and days I was cutting bamboo
08:22And it was scary, because I felt like I was making the same mistakes as him
08:27That is to say, to use all my food, to weaken me
08:31In order to build a raft that wouldn't float at all
08:35Rafting test, second version
08:38Rafting test, third version
08:50I think it's floating enough
08:56Ok, let's try
09:08Rafting test, third version
09:13It's so cool, it's working
09:18I'm so happy, so happy with this raft
09:21I had the impression that if I had made this trip a century, two centuries or 30,000 years ago
09:27It would have been the same
09:29Because the living was everywhere, it was quite splendid
09:38Rafting test, third version
09:45There's an engine, there's an engine
09:47I swear, the top of my head, there's an engine
09:50Oh f**k
09:59Oh f**k, there's a spiral
10:01It's been 50 days since I saw a person
10:05They were the first men I met since the beginning of the expedition
10:10So for 46 days, they were Indians from the Eteko tribe
10:14And they welcomed me in their pirogue, I abandoned the raft
10:17They fed me tons of fish, and I was saved
10:25I had the feeling, at that moment, that I had saved Raymond Moffret
10:28Because we had both managed to do what he had started 70 years ago
10:35I think that the urgent dream that both of us had, Moffret and me
10:39Which was to leave civilization and return to nature
10:43It made us burn stages
10:46I was lucky, he wasn't as lucky
10:49But I know that I crossed a limit during this expedition
10:53That I don't want to cross again
10:55Because the goal is not to put me in danger, it's quite the opposite
10:59I did everything I had to learn
11:01And I think it's not the jungle that is dangerous
11:04And Raymond Moffret says it himself
11:06It's not the jungle that kills the civilized man
11:09It's his ignorance
11:11So the goal is to go back there
11:13And this time, to go live with the Indians
11:15To learn how to build an ark
11:17To learn how to hunt, to learn how to fish
11:19To learn how to know the flora
11:22To know what I can eat, etc
11:26It's about living in the jungle
11:28And not just surviving like I did during this expedition