Travel Insurance Guide

You've booked the flight to Freetown, secured your spot on the chimp-tracking expedition at Tacugama, and started packing for two weeks of beach hopping along the Sierra Leone Peninsula. The last thing on your mind is what happens if you twist an ankle on Mount Bintumani, lose your camera bag in transit through Casablanca, or need to cut your trip short because of a family emergency back home. That's exactly why travel insurance deserves serious thought before you fly — especially when your itinerary involves remote eco-lodges, adventure activities, or multi-country routing through West Africa.

This guide breaks down what travel insurance actually covers, what it doesn't, how to choose a policy that matches the kind of trip OTATTS travellers tend to take, and the small print that catches people out. It's written for real travellers heading to real places — not theoretical worst-case-scenarios.

Why Travel Insurance Matters More for West Africa Trips

A weekend in Paris and a fortnight exploring Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea require very different risk profiles. In Western Europe, most countries have reciprocal healthcare arrangements, dense ambulance networks, and English-speaking hospitals around every corner. In rural West Africa, a serious medical incident can mean a four-hour drive on unpaved roads before you reach a clinic equipped for anything beyond basic first aid. For complex cases, medical evacuation to Dakar, Accra, or even Europe may be the only option — and that single flight can cost between $50,000 and $200,000 without insurance.

Beyond medical care, the practical realities of travelling in this region — flight cancellations on regional carriers, occasional political disruption, equipment loss during multi-leg journeys, and weather delays during rainy season (May to October) — make insurance less of a luxury and more of a fundamental travel cost. Think of it like the visa fee or vaccination appointment: not optional, just part of going.

The Five Coverage Areas That Actually Matter

1. Emergency Medical and Dental

This is the non-negotiable core of any policy. Look for a minimum of $100,000 in medical coverage, though $250,000 to $1 million is preferable for trips to regions with limited healthcare infrastructure. Check whether the policy pays providers directly or whether you have to pay upfront and claim back later. The latter sounds fine until you're sitting in a clinic in Bo being asked for $3,000 in cash before treatment begins.

Dental coverage tends to be capped low — typically $500 to $1,000 — and usually only covers emergency treatment, not routine work. Still worth having when you're three hours from the nearest dentist.

2. Medical Evacuation and Repatriation

This is the line item that justifies the entire policy. Medical evacuation moves you from where you are to where you can be treated properly. Repatriation gets you home. Together they should be covered to at least $250,000, and ideally $500,000 or more. Some premium policies include unlimited evacuation, which is genuinely worth the extra premium if you're heading anywhere remote.

Read carefully who makes the call on evacuation. Some insurers will only evacuate if their medical team agrees it's necessary; others will defer to the local treating physician. The former can lead to disputes when you most need quick decisions.

3. Trip Cancellation and Interruption

Cancellation covers you if you can't go at all — illness, bereavement, jury duty, employer issues. Interruption covers cutting the trip short once you've started. For an expensive trip with non-refundable lodge bookings and international flights, this matters. Most policies cover the prepaid, non-refundable portion of your trip, so keep your receipts and confirmations organised.

"Cancel for any reason" (CFAR) upgrades are increasingly available and typically reimburse 50–75% of your costs even when you cancel for reasons not listed in the standard policy. Useful if your work schedule is unpredictable or you simply want maximum flexibility.

4. Baggage and Personal Effects

Coverage here is usually modest — $1,000 to $2,500 — with per-item limits that can be as low as $250. If you're travelling with a $2,000 camera body, a $1,200 laptop, and good binoculars, the standard policy won't fully replace them. Either schedule high-value items separately (some insurers allow this for an extra premium) or check whether your home contents insurance extends overseas.

Document everything before you fly. Photograph your gear with serial numbers visible. Keep purchase receipts in cloud storage. Claims processes are dramatically smoother when you can prove ownership and value.

5. Travel Delay and Missed Connection

Sierra Leone is brilliantly connected to the world by a small number of routes that depend on tight transfers in Casablanca, Brussels, Addis Ababa, or Nairobi. When one leg goes wrong, the whole chain wobbles. Delay coverage typically kicks in after 6–12 hours and reimburses meals, hotels, and incidental costs. Missed connection coverage handles the rebooking costs if a delay causes you to miss your onward flight.

Adventure Activities: The Coverage Gap Most People Miss

Standard travel insurance policies have a list of "covered activities" and a list of excluded ones. The covered list usually includes swimming, snorkelling, light hiking, and cycling on paved roads. The excluded list — or the list that requires an adventure sports upgrade — often includes scuba diving below 30 metres, mountaineering above certain altitudes, off-road motorbiking, white-water rafting above grade 3, and anything described as "extreme."

For OTATTS-style itineraries, the activities that commonly need an upgrade include trekking on Mount Bintumani (the altitude itself isn't extreme, but multi-day remote hiking sometimes triggers exclusions), surfing at Bureh Beach, scuba diving around the Banana Islands, and any organised wildlife tracking that involves overnight stays in the bush. Always check the activity schedule attached to your policy and call the insurer if anything is ambiguous. Get the confirmation in writing.

Our adventure travel guides include detailed notes on what each activity involves, which helps when you're matching a policy to a specific itinerary.

Pre-Existing Medical Conditions

This is where claims most often get denied. If you have a managed condition — high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes, anxiety treated with medication, anything chronic — you must declare it during the application. Most insurers will still cover you, sometimes with a small premium increase, sometimes with that specific condition excluded from coverage. What you absolutely cannot do is fail to declare it and hope nothing happens. If you have an unrelated emergency and the insurer reviews your medical history, an undeclared condition can void the entire policy.

Some insurers have a "stable condition" clause that covers pre-existing issues if they've been unchanged for a defined period (often 60 to 180 days) before the trip. Read this carefully and ask your GP for a written confirmation of stability if you're unsure.

How to Choose the Right Policy

Match the Policy to the Trip, Not the Other Way Around

A two-week beach holiday in Tokeh and a three-week overland trip through Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Mali demand different policies. Look at your actual itinerary, list every activity, every border crossing, every internal flight, and every high-value item you're bringing. Then shop for a policy that explicitly covers all of it.

Annual Multi-Trip vs Single-Trip

If you travel internationally more than twice a year, an annual multi-trip policy usually works out cheaper than buying single-trip cover each time. Check the maximum trip duration — most annual policies cap individual trips at 30 to 45 days, with longer trips requiring an upgrade.

Read the Excess (Deductible)

The excess is the amount you pay before insurance kicks in. A low premium often hides a high excess. A policy with a $250 excess per claim is very different from one with a $50 excess. For minor incidents — a lost phone charger, a one-night hotel after a delayed flight — a high excess means you're effectively self-insuring.

Check the Geographic Zones

Most insurers price by region. "Worldwide excluding USA/Canada" is usually cheapest. "Worldwide including USA" is typically the most expensive tier because of healthcare costs there. Make sure Sierra Leone and any neighbouring countries you'll visit are included — some budget policies exclude specific countries or regions deemed high-risk.

What to Do Before You Fly

Print two physical copies of your policy summary and emergency contact numbers. Keep one with your passport and one in your main luggage. Save the same documents to your phone and to cloud storage. Make sure a family member at home knows your policy number and the insurer's 24-hour emergency line.

Note the time zone difference when calling the emergency line. Most insurers have global 24/7 support, but the quality of response can vary depending on who picks up. Have your policy number, location, and a brief description of the situation ready before you call.

If you're packing prescription medication, bring the prescription itself and ideally a doctor's letter explaining what each medication is for. This helps at customs, helps if you need a replacement abroad, and helps if you need to claim for lost medication.

Making a Claim Without Tears

Claims succeed or fail based on documentation. For medical claims: keep every receipt, every prescription, every diagnosis report. For lost or stolen items: file a police report within 24 hours (this is almost always required) and get a written copy. For delays: keep boarding passes, written confirmation of the delay reason from the airline, and receipts for everything you spent during the delay.

Submit claims as soon as possible after returning home. Most policies have a window of 30 to 60 days. If documentation is missing, the insurer will usually request it rather than reject the claim outright, but the process is faster when everything is ready upfront.

For trip planning that takes insurance considerations into account from the start, see our trip planning guides and Sierra Leone travel resources.

Common Mistakes That Cost Travellers Money

Buying insurance the day before departure means you've already lost coverage for cancellation events that happened in the weeks between booking and now. Buy insurance the same day you book your first non-refundable element of the trip — that's the moment your financial exposure begins.

Assuming credit card travel insurance is enough. Card insurance is genuinely useful, but it almost always has lower medical limits, shorter coverage periods, and stricter conditions than standalone policies. Read what your card actually offers before deciding.

Forgetting to extend coverage when plans change. If your two-week trip becomes three weeks, your policy doesn't automatically follow. Call the insurer and pay the extension fee — it's far cheaper than discovering you're uninsured for the final week when something goes wrong.