Travel health insurance and Mexico.

The teenaged kid on the ATV came hurtling over the dune, seemingly out of nowhere and definitely out of control. Staring at him in disbelief, I immediately recognized four problems with this scene:

1. My comrades and I, who were just wrapping up a multi-day desert trek, were directly below him.


2. The kid wasn't wearing a helmet.


3. The kid had a passenger, a terrified young girl who also wasn't wearing a helmet.


4. The nearest decent hospital was hours away and across the border in the United States.

Fortunately, this future Darwin-Award recipient managed to avoid us and keep his quad upright and his girlfriend momentarily safe.

But it got me thinking about what a person would do in a medical emergency in a place like Puerto Penasco or any other Mexican destination that didn't have a major medical facility. Could you find a way to be evacuated? How much would that cost?

A year later I purchased, for the first time, travel medical insurance while preparing for a mountaineering trip to southern Mexico. Although I have a good health insurance plan in the states, I found out that it only reimburses you for emergency medical evacuation in foreign countries. Nothing else -- physician fees, hospital charges -- is covered.

Now, evacuation can cost several thousand if not tens of thousands of dollars. And I would need to pay that first, then go through all the claim reimbursement crap with my health insurer. A good travel health insurance plan gets you in contact with a medical provider and negotiates and pays for necessary evacuation. All you (or your conscious companion) need to do is call a toll-free number.

I bought this first policy mainly because I thought I was putting myself in situations a little riskier than normal: cross-country trekking and high-altitude climbing. Since then, I've realized that the real risks -- especially in developing countries -- are taken while you're doing everyday touristy stuff: Crossing a street to that cute café or dodging exposed rebar on torn-up sidewalks.

So I just took out another policy for our upcoming trip to Panama. It's only costing us a few bucks a day and it does give me some peace of mind. But between you and me, I don't want to find out how well it works.