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Thursday 20 June 2013

Travel insurance? Money? Two weeks to go!

Travelling would be a whole lot easier if there was less administration to deal with.

I've just gone through the arduous task of enlisting travel insurance and performing a few tasks at my bank (telling them I'm going away, talking about money in Mexico, etc.). The difficult of these tasks was compounded significantly by the fact that I live in Spain. Unfortunately the phrase "meaningless red-tape" is often taken to new extremes over here...

I did have a bit of a debate with myself about the necessity for travel insurance. Honestly I'm not much of an "insurance" guy". Insurance is a business, people make money out of other people's insecurities, and very rarely an insurance company has to pay out a few bucks but only after fighting tooth and nail not to. However, a few people told me that medical care in Mexico was very expensive, and after a bit of research I found decent cover for EU residents (since I'm not a UK resident at this time) for less than €30 a month. So I took the plunge on that one.

As for the money issue... obviously I want to have as little real cash on me at any one time as possible. I don't intend on getting robbed, but if it does happen I don't want to have to hand over any more than $10-20. According to my research, credit card is a decent and well-accepted form of payment. So I'm going with that in mind. I have various credit cards (Mastercard, Visa, etc.) so coverage shouldn't be a problem. On top of that I'll probably take a few hundred in cash, and spread the quantities throughout my person and luggage. I still need to buy some kind of secret security belt to stick my passport etc. in....

Two weeks to go... I'm certainly not feeling "more relaxed" about it, but the thought of slapping up my first post-arrival blog update with a serving of Mexican food and beer is relatively soothing.

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