THE BEST MOTORCYCLE ROADS AND RIDES OF COLOMBIA

We can write this guide with a straight face because we started here. Our founder Mike Thomsen rode into Colombia in 2008, fell in love, and opened what was then the country's only adventure motorcycle tour and rental company — the business that grew into MotoDreamer. Seventeen-plus years and more than 4,000 riders later, we have logged over 500,000 km in South America and built 36 unique riding days in Colombia alone. We also put cameras on our guests: the roads below are described in the words our riders actually said in the New World Ride documentary series, filmed on tour with a professional crew. Or, as Mike put it back in the Medellin days: "This is a serious bikers' country... and there's not a straight road in the whole goddamn country."

WHY COLOMBIA HAS NO STRAIGHT ROADS

The geography does the work for us. Colombia is the only country in South America where the Andes split into three separate ranges — western, central and eastern — and our routes spend their days zig-zagging between them on endless curves and twisties. Every one of those ranges carries mountain passes over 4,000 meters, and one of the high passes clocks in at 15,573 feet, around 4,700 meters. That is why a typical touring day here maxes out at about 250 km: the mountains simply will not let you go faster, and you would not want to.

"Mountain passes from zero to four thousand meters and back down in one day — you won't stop smiling when you ride in Colombia." Mike Thomsen · founder · transcribed from his Colombia presentation video

And you will have company. There are 10 million motorcycles registered in Colombia, which means motorcycle shops in nearly every town and a country that genuinely understands riders. Everything that follows is a road or ride we run today, with the tour that covers it.

LAS LETRAS: THE 4,000-METER PASS OVER THE CENTRAL ANDES

The signature climb of our 10-day Colombia tour is day three, Honda to Salento — roughly 280 km that ascend from the Magdalena Valley up the flanks of the Los Nevados del Ruiz volcano and over the Las Letras high mountain pass at 4,000 meters. Nevado del Ruiz sits among the highest mountain passes in Colombia, and the day delivers the full zero-to-four-thousand experience Mike describes above. When our New World Ride film crew rode this kind of mountain day, one guest measured it in weather: the group went from around 82–83 °F and 90% humidity to 44 °F, rain, clouds and fog on the way up, with a coffee stop in the little town of La Esperanza before trying (and failing, through the clouds) to spot the volcano itself.

"You'd never think in Colombia you'd have to have hand warmers, but for that half an hour, it was fantastic." Guest rider · The New World Ride, Season 3 · transcribed from the series

The same rider summed up the road geometry better than any map could: "The straightest section of road that we just went over was probably less than a quarter mile — everything else was turns." That is Las Letras country in one sentence.

THE COFFEE REGION: FILANDIA, SALENTO AND THE COCORA VALLEY

Between the central and western ranges lies the UNESCO-listed Coffee Cultural Landscape, and it is the emotional center of both our Colombia tours. From the wooden mirador in Filandia — built in 2007 from mangrove wood — you look out over the entire coffee-growing valley, then drop into colonial plazas sitting at around 2,800 meters where the temperature holds a pleasant 76 °F. We tour a working coffee farm where you follow the bean from "match stick" seedling to roaster, and learn the uncomfortable truth that the prettiest beans get exported while Colombia drinks the rest. One of our New World Ride guests reviewed the result on camera:

"This is good stuff from the source. It's unbelievable. Could very well be the best cup of coffee I've ever had. Never take a cup of coffee for granted again." Guest rider · The New World Ride, Season 3 · transcribed from the series

Then comes the Cocora Valley near Salento, home of the wax palms — at up to 60 meters, the tallest palms on Earth, growing improbably high in the mountains. Our guests run out of normal vocabulary here. "The combination of those really tall palm trees up in the high mountains — it's just something you don't normally see," said one. Another, a rider who had seen a lot of the world, went further:

"I've been all over the place and I ain't seen nothing like this. This is ace... it's like Lord of the Rings, like something off another planet." Guest rider · The New World Ride, Season 3 · transcribed from the series

OUT OF MEDELLÍN: EL PEÑOL AND THE GUATAPÉ LAKES

Medellin sits in a huge valley, and the ride out is an event in itself — "we spent about an hour climbing up the mountainside, weaving through the corners to leave the city," as the New World Ride narration puts it. The reward on the far side is El Peñol: a giant granite monolith over 650 feet tall that sticks up out of the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the Guatapé lakes, with stairs built by locals all the way to the top. On our 10-day tour this is day seven, Medellin to Doradal, and it comes with a very Colombian bonus: motorcycles pass through the country's many toll booths for free, so you hug the right lane and roll on by.

It was on these roads east of Medellin — twisty, windy, alive — that the strongest verdict of the whole documentary was filmed:

"If you can't feel alive here, you cannot feel alive, period. I think this is the best riding I've ever had in my life, for real." Guest rider · The New World Ride, Season 3 · transcribed from the full film

Another guest, crossing the same range and looking down at the twisting descent into the valley, kept it simpler: "I think the only thing that's going to be sore is my face from grinning."

THE MAGDALENA VALLEY AND COLONIAL HONDA

Drop off any of the three ranges toward the middle of the country and you land in the Magdalena Valley, the region with the highest average yearly temperature in Colombia. It is the great contrast day of our routes: sweating river-valley heat, then a semi-rough road straight back up the mountain. One New World Ride guest previewed a day like this perfectly before setting off — "There will be bits of road where the road doesn't exist at all... tarmac, no tarmac, you name it. It's going to be a right old laugh."

The overnight is Honda, a roughly 350-year-old colonial river-port town where the King of Spain's envoys stayed in the building right next to our hotel. On our 10-day tour you reach it early — day two is Bogota to Honda, about 180 km of descending twists — and the historic center rewards the stop. Guests on the documentary were struck by something less romantic and more telling: how clean and welcoming the towns along the way were, one admitting he was "shocked" compared to other countries he had ridden. Lunch on these backroads is a Colombian almuerzo — soup, then a plate of meat, rice, beans and salad — for about $2.50.

VILLA DE LEYVA AND THE ZIPAQUIRÁ SALT CATHEDRAL RUN

The eastern range holds the closing act of our 10-day loop. Day eight runs from Doradal past Hacienda Napoles — Pablo Escobar's former ranch, a museum since his death in 1993, with exotic animals still on the property — to Villa de Leyva, a Spanish colonial village built around the world's largest cobblestone square; our guests on camera called it one of the largest plazas in all of South America. Day nine, Villa de Leyva to Bogota, stops at the Zipaquirá Salt Cathedral: you walk several hundred meters into a working salt mine where the ceiling, the floor and the walls are all salt. The mine has been worked since indigenous times, 600 to 800 years ago, and grew from the miners' small shrines at the tunnel entrances into a full underground cathedral — the current one only about 16 years old when we filmed there. As the local guide told our group inside the mountain, "it's something like being in another planet."

These two days also produce the kind of riding lesson our groups pass around. One guest credited the group itself: "The group dynamic has made me a better rider — if I can get in line behind a couple bikes and follow their line, I'll go at a much faster clip than I would solo."

CARTAGENA SOUTH: THE LONG WAY THROUGH COLOMBIA

The roads above are the loop. The other way to ride Colombia is straight through it — the opening act of our 23-day New World Ride expedition from Cartagena to Cusco. From the walled colonial city on the Caribbean you ride 374 km through the tropical lowlands to Caucasia, then 284 km through the hills of Antioquia into Medellin, the city of eternal spring, with a full rest day to explore it. Then 279 km to Salento through the coffee landscape, and 334 km of Andean riding to white-washed Popayán before the road climbs toward Pasto, the Laguna de la Cocha and the Ecuadorian border. The expedition covers roughly 4,800 km in 23 days — about 70% quality asphalt and 30% twisty high-altitude back-roads, from 32 °C Caribbean heat to 5 °C mountain air above 4,000 meters.

Our very first documentary pilots were filmed on these southern roads, and the verdict from the riders holds up more than a decade later: "The roads are really good here in Colombia... you get your occasional potholes, but the roads are kept in good condition." Or, from another morning on the same trip: "All morning we rode the amazing Colombian mountain roads, passing trucks, laying it over in the corners, enjoying life."

WHICH TOUR RIDES THESE ROADS

Everything in this guide is on one of two tours. The 10-Day Colombia Motorcycle Tour is the concentrated version: an all-paved loop from Bogota through Honda, the Las Letras 4,000-meter pass, Salento and the Cocora Valley, Cali, Medellin, El Peñol, Villa de Leyva and the Zipaquirá Salt Cathedral. It rates 5% off-road, 85% comfort and 100% fun, runs with small groups of 5 to 10 riders behind a professional multilingual tour leader with a local guide and support vehicle, and starts at $5,499 on a BMW F750GS in a shared room, with R1250GS and R1300GS upgrades available.

The 23-Day New World Ride is the full continental crossing: Cartagena to Cusco through Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, ending at Machu Picchu, with groups capped and lead and sweep guides riding along. Colombia is its opening week — and many riders decide on day three it will not be their last.

Don't take our word for any of this. The riders quoted above said it on camera, and you can watch them and many more here. We will let the last rider of the last day of the New World Ride close the argument, filmed at the farewell in Medellin: "I have to go home tomorrow, unfortunately... just going to have to come back next year, which I'm already planning."