About us
Who we are
We are Marie and Juan, the only two members of this traveling team, on our way for a several years journey across America, on our bicycles!
We met in 2016 while traveling in Indonesia. Few month later, we decided to settle together in Australia where we developed our beautiful project: we wanted to keep traveling, but this time, together on two wheels.
Indeed the very first thing Juan did when we arrived in South Australia was to get me a bike. We never used another way of moving around Adelaide for the next 3 years. And little by little, he managed to convince me to jump blindly in this crazy adventure: cycling from Alaska to reach Patagonia.
We are a team
I am Marie
I am originally from Nantes, France, and in my other life, I was a legal counsel. I studied hard, I wanted to become a judge. I even did an exam for that (it works like that in France). Life is very surprising sometimes though, I experienced so many incredibles thing since then! From the transiberian train, to Mongolia in the middle of winter, from Thailand where I learned to dive, to the treks of Myanmar and Laos and finally, Australia…
Without forgetting Indonesia, my love-at-first-sight country, where I met Juan. I was hiding behind my Eiffel-tower size backpack, he was discovering South East Asia… on a bicycle, of course!
I am Juan
If you ask me where I am from…it’s a bit complicated.
I was born in Puerto Rico, then when I was 10, we moved to Spain with my family, their country of origin. Finally I moved to Australia in 2013. I am a scientist, biochemist specialized in bioinformatics. But what I like the most is to travel, explore, discover, and sports. Hence in 2016, I took my bike and cycled for 6 month around South East Asia. Over 8000km later, back in the kangaroo country, I was only thinking about hitting the road again.
For this biketrip project, we could not have done without the help of our amazing friends. This website has been entirely designed by Robin LOIZO (robin@loizo.media) who did a fantastic work and if you like the logo, well, it comes directly from the talented mind of Maude Lemetais!
Why the Turtles on wheelies
Maybe you know The Hare and the Tortoise tale from Jean de la Fontaine.
This Fable ends with a lesson: “Rien ne sert de courir, il faut partir à point” or “Slowly and steady wins the race“. It is exactly in this spirit that we are set to overcome the challenge of crossing the American continent on bikes, slowly and steady is our motto.
Also, when we are not discovering the land on our bikes, we both love exploring the blue side of the Planet. And we have “a thing” for turtles (Marie especially). They are so cool! Did you know for exemple a sea turtles will migrate thousands of miles over their lifetime? They are epic travelers.
Plus we can be very slow at times, therefore we couldn’t get better ambassador for our journey.
The “wheelies” is a little reminder for us of our life in Australia, where all words are shorten in a fun way. For instance, you wear sunnies (sunglasses), you organise “barbies” (barbecues) with your friends and you fear the “mozzies” (mosquitoes) at night.
So here we are, the Turtles on Wheelies, happily ready to go as far as our bicycles will bring us!
We care, we act
We are super proud to collaborate with the 88bikes Foundation, which main goal is to provide bicycles to young woman and girls all around the world, most of them rescued from human trafficking.
Their action give them the opportunity to brake the isolation and reconnect to the society, helping them to build a future. Since 2007 they have endowed nearly 10,000 bikes to heroic kids in eighteen countries.
With our adventure, we want to promote the use of the bicycle and to give some meaning to each of our wheel turn.