In Colombia, they are called motos, instead of motorcycles. This is fitting, not just because that is a shortened version of the Spanish word for motorcycle (motocicleta), but because it is a cute word too. Since the motos in Colombia are almost all tiny, at least by American standards, it feels more appropriate to call them that.
That being said, the closest thing I had ever owned to a moto, was an electric bike that topped out at 25. I wasn’t ready for a large American style motorcycle. Yet I also couldn’t survive in Colombia without some form of transportation. Navigating Medellin using Uber moto was fine: I could hail a ride just like a regular stateside Uber, and someone would pull up on a bike to take me where ever. If I really wanted to get around like a local though, I needed my own moto.
How to get a motorcycle license in Colombia
There is perhaps no other country in Latin America that has an easier moto buying process for a foreignerthan in Colombia. As an American, all I needed to make a deal was my passport. Driving, however, was still illegal. For that, I needed a license. This called for hours of classes, testing, fingerprints, and paperwork.
Getting licensed in Colombia isn’t complicated, but it is a process. First, I needed to be entered in the national transit registry, known as RUNT, which required my passport. Then came the medical exam at the clinic, where they checked eyesight, reflexes, and general coordination before sending the results directly into the system. I recall one part of the test was like a videogame, you had to use handlebars to keep a ball on the screen perfectly centered as the screen rolled back and forth.
After that, came the classroom lessons on traffic rules and hands-on riding practice, followed by both a written test and a practical exam. Once passed, the certificates were uploaded to RUNT, and I took everything to the local transit office to pay the government fee.
Like all things in Colombia, if you knew a guy on the inside, the whole process could be smooth sailing. Luckily, I was able to find this guy on the inside without much searching. If you troll the Facebook groups for expats in Colombia, it won’t take you long to find the same guy that I found.
He helped me with the process from start to finish: get my official photos, fingerprints, and documents done while handling all the talking. After everything was done, I had my completely legitimate licencia within a matter of days after sending him a hefty processing fee (about $400 US dollars). Since this was only shortly after I initially arrived in the country, my Spanish was not great, so this was a worthwhile investment.
Getting a moto
I bought the cheapest semi-automatica moto I could find. Not quite a moped, but not quite a convential transmission and frame style as what you would consider a normal bike. It was weirdly efficient. About $3 to fill up the tank, and you could run at top speed (85-100 kph) for a few hundred kilometers. I never bothered to get into the exact numbers because it was so economical that it did not matter. And since motos don’t pay tolls in Colombia, travelling with this thing was almost free.
A 2025 Yamaha Crypton. It set me back almost $2000. Sound financial decisions missed me that day, and I paid for it with my credit card. But the miles would give me more smiles than the debt could take away from me. It had 0 kilometers on the dash, and I had 1000 to go before I needed to bring it in for that first tune up.
For a day or two, I broke it in around Medellín: weaving through traffic like a madman, stalling at lights, learning how to handle the flow of chaos that passes for order on Colombian streets. The city became my classroom, every roundabout and steep hill a test I couldn’t study for.
There was only one logical next step. A road trip. A long one. Out of Medellín, across unfamiliar towns, chasing beaches I’d only seen on maps. The kind of ride where you don’t just learn about the bike but you learn about yourself.
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