Jeans vs Shorts, Sneakers vs Hiking Boots for Rainforrest?

[Kathy]

Hi, jeans and boots are so heavy/hot to bring/wear.
Can we go into the jungle in shorts and sneakers for hiking or tours?

Any poisonous snakes in Tobago?

Thanks,
Kathy

[Steve Wooler]

Kathy

Whilst we are always delighted to answer readers questions and try to be as helpful as possible, there is no substitute for reading the main site where so many of your questions will be answered.

[Lee Somerton]

Hi Kathy,

When we went with Patrick from Yes Tourism in early June, we went in shorts and sneakers. There were people renting out boots at the entrance to the forest but we decided to use our existing footwear. There are certain points along the trail where it will be difficult to avoid stepping into muddy puddles which will cover your shoes (this happened to both of us and effectively suspended the shoes from active duty for the remainder of the vacation!!). It was a little slippery but wasn't enough to make us regret our decision.

Incidentally, make sure you use plenty of insect spray. In normal circumstances, we give ourselves a reasonable spray and leave it at that. For this tour we sprayed quite liberally and then made sure that it was well rubbed in (following Patrick's example) before we started. I don't remember either of us being bitten.

Have fun.

Lee.

[Charlie Atkinson]

We went on a trip to the rainforest a couple of weeks ago. Let's just say that we understood why it's called the rain forest!! It absolutely bucketed it down. Rained like we had never seen it. We were totally unprepared. No-one had mentioned that the rain can last for hours up there or that it gets very cold or that the path turns into a river very quickly.

I suppose this was our naivete being our first trip to Tobago, but I would'nt like others to get caught like this. We all got completely drenched - it really was no fun - and the wellies we were advised to hire at the entrance to the rain forest (another expense no-one had mentioned) filled completely with water.

I was optimistically assuming that this was an unfortunate one off, but talking to some people at our hotel who did the trip last year, we discovered that they had experienced exactly the same thing.

My advice would be hire the wellies and wear light clothing but not shorts - and take lightweight anoraks. It was so wet we didn't need to worry about mossies - no doubt you would do if it were drier. And if it looks like rain don't bother lugging expensive cameras up there - we nearly ruined ours and got virtually no pictures.

All that said, it is worth seeing and the kids enjoyed seeing the parrots and the amazing plant life, even though they were soaked.