Last-minute departure · Sep 2026
End of the Earth
Peru · Bolivia · Chile · Argentina
July 14, 2026
2026 edition. Rules/products last verified: July 2026.
Start with the travel insurance sitting in your inbox from last year's fortnight in Majorca: it almost certainly will not cover a three-month trip. Not partially. Not up to a point. In most cases, if your trip exceeds the policy's maximum duration (often 31 days, sometimes as little as 24), the entire trip may be uninsured from the moment you leave the house.
This is the single most important thing to understand about insuring an extended trip, and it is why a proper long term travel insurance guide starts with policy mechanics rather than price comparisons. Long-term cover is a different product from holiday insurance, with different rules, different exclusions, and a different set of traps for the unwary. Get it right and it is one of the easier items on your planning list: a few hundred pounds, sorted in an afternoon. Get it wrong and you have removed the safety net from underneath the biggest trip of your life.
The good news: getting it right is entirely achievable, and this article will walk you through exactly how. It is one piece of the broader planning picture we cover in our complete guide to how to travel for 3 months, and arguably the piece where an hour of attention pays for itself most handsomely.
Most travel insurance sold in the UK falls into two categories, and understanding the difference is the foundation of everything else.
Single-trip policies cover one journey from departure to return. They are priced and underwritten around typical holiday lengths, which is why many cap the trip at 31 days. Some will extend to 45, 60 or 90 days, but you must check, because the cap is a hard limit, not a guideline.
Annual multi-trip policies sound generous (a whole year of cover) but they contain what we call the duration trap, the clause that catches more long-term travellers than any other: a per-trip duration limit. A typical annual policy covers unlimited trips of up to 31 days each. Take one 90-day trip and you have exceeded the per-trip limit on day 32. Crucially, many insurers take the position that a trip which was always going to exceed the limit was never covered at all, including the first 31 days.
This is worth pausing on, because the logic surprises people. Insurance is priced on the trip you planned, not the portion of it you have completed. If your itinerary shows a return flight 90 days after departure and your policy caps trips at 31 days, an insurer can decline a claim made in week two. The duration limit is a condition of the cover existing, not a countdown to when cover stops.
So the first task is simple: for a three-month trip, you need a policy whose maximum trip duration explicitly covers your full itinerary, with margin. If you are travelling for 90 days, look for cover to at least 100: plans change, flights get moved, and you do not want a five-day extension to unravel your insurance.
Once you know you need genuine long-trip cover, three products do the job. The market is moving in your favour, too: with bookings from UK customers aged 60-plus up 42% on pre-pandemic levels, according to Intrepid Travel, insurers have noticed that the long trip is no longer a young person's product.
Extended single-trip cover. Many mainstream insurers offer single-trip policies with durations of 90, 120 or even 180 days, sometimes labelled "extended stay" or "long stay". For a one-off three-month trip, this is usually the cleanest and cheapest option. For a traveller in their early sixties covering 90 days in Europe, expect roughly £100–£250 depending on medical history; worldwide cover including the USA typically runs £200–£400. Worldwide excluding the USA, Canada and the Caribbean sits somewhere in between; if you are not visiting those countries, excluding them cuts the premium meaningfully.
Backpacker or long-stay policies. Designed for trips of 3–18 months, these are often the cheapest way to cover a long trip, but read them carefully. Many were built for 25-year-olds, and it shows: some impose upper age limits of 60 or 65, others reduce medical cover limits for older travellers, and baggage limits are frequently low. They are worth a look, particularly for multi-country itineraries, but they are not automatically the right answer just because the word "long" appears in the product name.
Annual policies with extended trip limits. A handful of insurers offer annual cover with per-trip limits of 60, 90 or 124 days, sometimes as a paid upgrade. If you plan to travel repeatedly (a three-month trip plus several shorter ones in the same year), this can be good value. Just confirm, in writing if necessary, that the extended limit applies to the regions you are visiting and to travellers of your age.
For most people planning a single extended trip, the extended single-trip policy wins on simplicity, price and clarity. The annual option earns its keep only if the rest of your year involves more travel.
At a glance, the three products compare like this:
Figures are indicative ranges for a traveller in their early sixties, as discussed above; your medical history and route will move them.
Every long term travel insurance guide should be blunt about this: the headline price tells you almost nothing. What matters is what the policy refuses to pay for, and on a three-month trip the exclusions bite harder because you have more time in which to encounter them.
Undeclared medical conditions. This is the big one. UK insurers ask you to declare pre-existing conditions, and "pre-existing" is defined far more broadly than most people assume. High blood pressure controlled by medication counts. Raised cholesterol counts. A hip investigation that led nowhere counts. Failing to declare something does not just void cover for that condition; it can give the insurer grounds to decline any medical claim. Declare everything, answer the screening questions patiently, and if your history is complicated, use a specialist medical travel insurer rather than accepting a string of exclusions from a mainstream one. The premium will be higher. The cover will be real.
Returning home mid-trip. Many single-trip policies end the moment you set foot back in the UK, even for a planned week home between two legs. If your three months includes a return for a family wedding, you need a policy that explicitly permits a home visit; some do, many do not.
Activity exclusions. Policies carry lists of excluded or extra-premium activities, and they are less exotic than you might think. Hiring a scooter in Vietnam, riding as a passenger on a moped, hiking above a certain altitude, even cycling in some cases: all appear on exclusion lists. Match the list against what you actually intend to do, not against a generic image of your trip.
Alcohol clauses. Nearly all policies exclude claims where alcohol was a contributing factor, and some insurers interpret this aggressively. You do not need to travel dry; you do need to know the clause exists.
Valuables and single-item limits. A policy with £2,000 baggage cover may cap any single item at £200–£300. If you are travelling with a good camera, a laptop and a decent phone (which most people now are), check the single-item limit and consider covering electronics through home insurance or a gadget policy instead.
Cancellation cover that doesn't match your trip. A three-month trip can easily represent £10,000–£20,000 of committed spend. A policy with £3,000 cancellation cover leaves you carrying the rest. Add up your non-refundable commitments (flights, accommodation deposits, any organised programme) and make sure the cancellation limit covers them.
Strip away the marketing and a strong policy for an extended trip has a fairly short specification.
Notice what is not on the list: the lowest excess, the cheapest premium, the longest list of minor benefits. On a long trip, the only scenarios that seriously threaten your finances are a major medical event and a cancelled or cut-short trip. Optimise for those two and treat everything else as decoration.
A note on cost perspective. Comprehensive cover for a traveller in their sixties on a 90-day European trip might come to £150–£300, roughly 2% of a typical trip budget, as we set out in our breakdown of the cost of 3 months of travel. Uninsured medical repatriation from Southeast Asia, by contrast, routinely exceeds £30,000. Few items in your planning offer that ratio of premium to protection.
Buy cancellation cover when you book, not when you fly. Cancellation protection starts from the date you purchase the policy. If you book flights in January for a September departure and buy insurance in August, the seven months in between (during which a health change or family emergency could force cancellation) are entirely unprotected. Buy the policy the week you make your first non-refundable commitment.
The GHIC helps, but it is not insurance. The UK Global Health Insurance Card gives you access to state healthcare in the EU on the same terms as residents. It is free, worth carrying, and can even reduce your premium with some insurers. But it does not cover repatriation, private treatment, mountain rescue, or anything outside participating countries. It complements insurance; it never replaces it.
Check the age maths. Some policies price by your age at purchase, others by your age during travel. If a birthday lands mid-trip and pushes you into a new age band (or past an age limit), you want to know before departure, not during a claim.
Tell your insurer if plans change. Extending the trip, adding a country, taking up an activity you had not declared: all of these can usually be accommodated mid-trip for a small additional premium, and none of them can be fixed retrospectively after something goes wrong.
One deliberate omission from this article: the specifics of insuring significant medical conditions in your sixties (screening processes, specialist insurers, and how conditions affect pricing) deserve their own treatment, and they have one in our guide to health insurance for long-term travel. If your medical history is more than a line or two, read that piece alongside this one.
It is worth knowing what travelling with an organised programme does and does not do to your insurance needs.
What it does: it typically brings financial protection for the trip cost itself (UK package travel rules protect your money if the organiser fails), and it puts support on the ground when things go wrong, which matters more than people expect. When a participant on DECADES' Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina programme needed a hospital visit in Cusco, the difference between navigating that alone and having someone local who knew the system was considerable: not financially, but practically and emotionally.
What it does not do: replace your personal travel insurance. Medical cover, repatriation, cancellation for your own health reasons: these remain yours to arrange regardless of how the trip is organised. Any operator who suggests otherwise should be treated with caution; reputable ones will insist you hold your own policy, and will usually specify minimum cover levels.
Can I use my annual travel insurance for a three-month trip? Almost certainly not. Most annual multi-trip policies cap each trip at around 31 days, and a trip planned to exceed that limit may never have been covered at all, including its first month. Any long term travel insurance guide worth its salt starts here: for a 90-day trip you need a policy whose maximum trip duration explicitly covers your full itinerary, with margin.
How much does long-stay travel insurance cost if you're over 60? For a traveller in their early sixties on a 90-day European trip, expect roughly £100–£250 depending on medical history, rising to £200–£400 for worldwide cover including the USA. That typically works out at around 2% of a total trip budget; modest against uninsured repatriation from Southeast Asia, which routinely exceeds £30,000.
Do I still need travel insurance if I have a GHIC? Yes. The GHIC gives you access to state healthcare in the EU on the same terms as residents, and it is well worth carrying, but it does not cover repatriation to the UK, private treatment, mountain rescue, or anything outside participating countries. It complements a proper policy; it never replaces one.
When should I buy insurance for a long trip? The week you make your first non-refundable booking. Cancellation cover starts from the date you purchase the policy, so booking flights in January and buying insurance in August leaves seven months in which a health change or family emergency would be entirely unprotected.
Planning your own three months away? Start with the free DECADES Gap Year Guide: the practical starting point covering budgets, planning, health and everything between deciding to go and boarding the plane. Get your free copy here.
Insurance is nobody's favourite part of planning a long trip, which is precisely why it is worth doing early and properly, so it stops occupying space in your head. The process really is an afternoon's work: list your countries and dates, note every medical condition however minor, decide your cancellation exposure, and then compare three or four policies on the specification above rather than on price alone.
What you are buying, in the end, is less a document than the freedom to take the trip wholeheartedly (to hire the car, book the boat, say yes to the detour) knowing that the worst realistic outcomes have been priced, covered and filed away. Once it is done, you can turn your attention to the far better questions of long-term travel: where to go, and in what order. Our 3-month itinerary ideas for retirees is the natural next read.
About the author: Laura Cannon is the founder of DECADES. She has spent the past twenty years travelling solo and long-term across the world; experience she now puts into designing three-month experiences for people in retirement and semi-retirement.
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