Motorcycle insurance through South America
 

Hi Everyone, has anyone taken out motorcycle insurance for South American countries lately? (Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina). I'm heading over in Jun/Jul 2020 planning to cover top to bottom in 12 months. Deep immersion travelling is what we have in mind! Any guidance would be appreciated as the web is flooded with useless info. Much appreciated!

My direct experience is kind've old and stale, so I'm skipping it. On the other hand, there's plenty of solid, reliable information here on the HUBB: just use the search box, starting with terms like "insurance Colombia," and "insurance Chile." You'll turn up sources for Mercosur insurance, locations of Colombian SOAT offices, and more.

If you don't want to do that, just read whatever posts about South America come along between now and June. Lots of people ask--and even more people fret aloud--about insurance, so by the time you leave you'll have a pretty good idea what to do.

You will probably also notice that older information is sometimes still valid, sometimes not. That means that no matter what you learn you'll need to be responsive to changes once on the ground in South America. In fact, by the time you leave wherever you're at in 6 months--and certainly by whenever your trip finishes 12 months after that--some of what you learn here will have changed.

I'm not sure what "top to bottom" means, so I'll just note that you listed only half the countries in South America, and didn't include the one which for many people has presented the only insoluble insurance issues: French Guiana.

Hope that's helpful.

Mark

I rode through every country in South America from 2012 to 2020. You can buy blanket coverage for all the southern South American countries (that includes one free tow) online from an Argentine company called ATM Seguros. If the online application rejects your passport number (like mine did) you can correspond with a human in head office who will process it for you. In French Guiana, coming from Suriname, there was an office that sold insurance 1 block from the control point. Going the other way, from Brazil, there is no office, but I did an online search and found a company in Italy called Mototouring s.r.l. that issued me a "carta verde" online. It was accepted by the French officials, who, by the way, also checked its expiry date on the way OUT of the country!