Women cycling in Colombia means riding into a country that has spent the last decade quietly building one of the most welcoming, infrastructure-ready environments for women on bikes anywhere in Latin America. The roads themselves have always been there — Andean climbs, coffee-region rolling miles, year-round riding weather. What has changed is the ecosystem around them: women-led cycling clubs in every major city, a national women’s cycling team competing on the international circuit, women-led coffee farms that now host riders along the country’s most famous routes, and a generation of female cyclists — Colombian and international — who have made Colombia part of their season every year.
At Beyond the Ride, women are not a segment we serve as an afterthought. Women cyclists arrive with their own questions, their own physiology, their own preferences for how a trip should be paced, fueled, and supported. We design our women’s tours around those needs — not as a softer version of a “real” cycling tour, but as the tour itself, built from the route up, for the rider it serves.
All-Inclusive women cycling tours Colombia: Why a women-only trip is different
The decision to book a women-only cycling tour is rarely about the bike. It is almost always about everything that surrounds the bike: who you’ll ride with, how the days are paced, how decisions are made, whether your concerns are taken seriously, and whether the trip is going to feel like yours or like someone else’s idea of what a cycling trip should be.
For decades, the international cycling industry built its trips around a default rider — and that default was male. The training plans, the group dynamics, the unspoken pace expectations, even the equipment defaults at rental shops, were all calibrated for that profile. Women-only tours did not appear because women cycle differently. They appeared because women asked, with increasing volume, for trips designed around them. An all-inclusive women cycling tour in Colombia is a specific operational choice — pace, group composition, support, accommodation, and culture — made on behalf of riders who deserve a trip planned with them in mind.
If you’d like to learn more about how the global landscape is changing for women who choose to travel solo, we invite you to read the following article by National Geographic.
Will I fit in?
This is the most common question we hear, and it is almost never asked out loud. Riders worry about age, ability, body type, language, gear, or whether their cycling life back home translates to a guided tour in another country.
Before your trip, Beyond the Ride asks about your riding preferences — pace, daily mileage you’re comfortable with, climbs you’d rather skip, fueling and recovery, anything that shapes how you ride — and we adapt the rides around what you tell us. Our women guests typically span the 30 to 65+ range, and they ride at the level that’s right for them. You can go as fast or as slow as you want, with no pressure to chase a group pace that isn’t yours. The trip flexes around the rider — not the other way around.
Will I be able to handle the level?
If you’re reading this and you’re contemplating Alto de Letras, it’s because you are a woman who rides toward a challenge — and this one is for you. Honest answer: yes, at your own pace. Alto de Letras is not won by speed; it is finished by patience. What the road rewards is rhythm, breathing, and the willingness to stay in your gear when others change theirs. Of course, training before the trip is the key to tackle a tough challenge like this.
You don’t have to match the rider in front of you. You have to keep climbing, on your terms, and the summit will be there when you arrive. What matters is not how fast you finish. It is that you finish. Every woman who has ridden this climb with Beyond the Ride has reached the same summit, with the same view, with the same meal waiting. Your pace is what makes the ride yours.
Will I enjoy it, or just suffer?
Cycling tours are sometimes sold on the suffering — the climb, the kilometers, the badge of having survived. We don’t sell the suffering. We design the day so that the effort delivers what most riders are actually after: a sense of arrival, a long descent earned, a coffee at a farm on a road you’ll remember, dinner with a group that gets it, and a body that recovers in time to do it again tomorrow.
There is a moment on every tour — usually somewhere in the middle of the second climbing day — when the rider stops thinking about whether she can do it and starts noticing the country around her. That moment is the trip. Everything else is logistics designed to get you there.
Am I going alone… or will I feel accompanied?
If you book solo, you are never alone on the road. Beyond the Ride’s team is with you the entire ride — a bilingual guide, a mechanic, a driver, and a sport-massage therapist who handles your daily recovery — and the small-group format (up to six cyclists per departure) often brings together women from different parts of the world who end up sharing the same climbs, the same coffee stops, and the same dinner table for seven days straight. The friendships that come out of that week tend to outlast the trip. More than one of our women guests has flown home with a cycling buddy on another continent and a standing reason to come back next season.
Or you can come with the people you love most and have them living their own version of the trip while you live yours.Bring a friend who also rides, a sister, your usual training partner, your cycling crew. Or bring someone who doesn’t ride at all — a spouse, a parent, a friend who prefers a coffee on the terrace to a climb at altitude.
Both the Alto de Letras Challenge and The Land of Coffee are built to receive non-cycling companions, with their own program during the cycling days. They live their own version of Colombia. You meet at dinner.
Still have questions? We invite you to read this in-depth article about what it’s like to experience riding through the Colombian Andes.
Will I Be Safe?
Safety on a cycling tour in Colombia is the question that generates more email than any other. We answered it in detail in a previous article — Is Colombia Safe for Cycling?
For women cyclists Beyond the Ride tours run with a support vehicle 200 meters off the back wheel for the entire ride — not a van that meets you at the summit, but a vehicle within reach from the moment you clip in to the moment you clip out. The accommodation is our own—a countryside home with a strong local legacy, not just another standard hotel stay.. Every guide is bilingual. Mobile telephone coverage is continuous across the primary cycling corridor.
The country you’ll ride through is the one Americans, British, and German travelers have been returning to in record numbers for the last three years.
Tours Designed for Women Riders
Both of Beyond the Ride’s women tours are open for booking on the 2026 & 2027 calendars:
- The Alto de Letras Challenge — Women Riders Only — a fully guided 7-day tour built around the world’s longest paved road climb. E-bike option included as a standard, max 8 cyclists, bilingual guide, daily sport massage.
- The Land of Coffee — a 7-day all-inclusive ride through the UNESCO Coffee Cultural Landscape, with a parallel cultural program for non-cycling companions and women-only departure dates published quarterly.
Both are priced and operated as all-inclusive trips: airport-to-airport ground support, vetted accommodation, daily sport-massage recovery, every meal during the cycling days, and women-only departures on published dates.
Experience Designed for Women — Not a “Pink Version” of a Men’s Tour
There is a version of a women’s cycling tour that exists in the industry — and we won’t run it. The version where the bikes get pink bar tape, the itinerary gets shorter, the pace gets softer, and the food gets lighter, as if a women’s tour were a smaller, gentler subset of the real thing.
That is not what a women-only Beyond the Ride tour is. The route is the same. Same kilometers, same altitude. The Land of Coffee still runs through the same Andean roads and the same coffee corridors that our co-ed groups ride. The standard is the same. What changes is the operating culture around the ride.
“Yes, we ride hard. But we also know when to slow down.” The decision to take the next ten minutes at conversation pace before the final pitch isn’t a concession — it’s a tactical choice that produces a better ride. There is a kind of group dynamic that pushes riders past their actual fitness because the social pressure quietly demands it. We don’t run that group dynamic.
“No silent competition. No invisible pressure. Just a different kind of ride.” One where the rider who arrives at the top last is greeted the same as the rider who arrives first. Where the woman taking her first 3,000+-meter climb is given the same operational respect as the rider on her fifth. And where the question “how are you actually feeling?” is asked at every rest stop and answered honestly because the culture expects it.
Your first women cycling tours Latin America trip — what to expect
For many of our riders, this is their first cycling trip in Latin America. The questions that arrive in our inbox tend to fall into three categories: the food, the language, and the unknowns.
On food. The cycling-week menu is built around what your body needs to perform. Breakfast at altitude, mid-ride fueling at scheduled intervals, real recovery meals at dinner. Dietary restrictions — vegetarian, gluten-free, lactose-intolerant — are handled at the accommodation level, on a case by case basis.. Local Colombian food shows up on rest days, when you have the digestive bandwidth to enjoy it without affecting tomorrow’s ride. Check our FAQs below for more information.
On language. Our guides are bilingual. Pharmacy stops, café stops, and any roadside interaction during the ride is mediated by the guide. You do not need any Spanish to be on this trip. (You’ll pick up some anyway.)
On the unknowns. The airport pick-up, the transfer, the SIM card, the ATM, the laundry, the bike-box storage, the next-morning briefing, the pharmacy run if you need it — every variable is handled. That is intentional. We don’t leave you to figure things out alone in a country that, despite everything you’ve read, you are still meeting for the first time.
It’s not just the food or the cycling—Colombia offers an ideal destination for international travelers, starting with its infrastructure and air connectivity. We invite you to learn more about this here.
Beyond the Ride publishes a women-only departure schedule each quarter. Small groups, fixed dates, validated pace cohorts. The 2026 calendar is open and the next women’s departures of the Alto de Letras Challenge and The Land of Coffee are filling now.
If you have been thinking about Colombia, the next step is the easiest one. See the upcoming dates, send a note about which tour you are considering, and we will match you with the next departure that fits your fitness and your travel calendar.
See the 2026 women-only calendar →
The Land of Coffee | Women Riders Only Cycling Tour in Colombia’s Coffee Region