For na­ture lover Bisoon­daye Gee­ta Seenath, it start­ed off as a sim­ple ex­cur­sion to Saly­bia Beach.While there, the Princes Town moth­er of three de­cid­ed to join 13 oth­ers in a hike to the near­by Rio Seco falls–and she end­ed up lost in the for­est for sev­en gru­elling days.Luck­i­ly, Ms Seenath was found alive and is now re­cov­er­ing at hos­pi­tal.But with the start of the long school va­ca­tion just days away, im­por­tant lessons need to be learned from her or­deal, which could so eas­i­ly have end­ed in tragedy.Plan­ning and safe­ty are es­sen­tial con­sid­er­a­tions for all groups and in­di­vid­u­als who will be en­joy­ing T&T's lush rain forests, wa­ter­falls, rivers and beach­es over the next sev­er­al weeks since, as Seenath learned the hard way, there are risks in the midst of all that scenic beau­ty.

From all re­ports, the hike which end­ed so bad­ly for Seenath was not prop­er­ly planned and there were no ex­pe­ri­enced hik­ers in the group. Any ex­pe­ri­enced out­doors per­son can at­test to the fact that even the sim­plest mis­take can re­sult in in­jury, or even loss of life.The risks are many–de­hy­dra­tion, fa­tigue, haz­ardous wa­ter cross­ings, hy­pother­mia and an­i­mal at­tacks are just some of the pos­si­ble per­ils.That is why the ba­sic rules of hik­ing in­clude re­main­ing aware and pre­pared, in ad­di­tion to plan­ning ahead.Hik­ing is a se­ri­ous ac­tiv­i­ty that re­quires equip­ment and ex­pert help.

In T&T there are sev­er­al well or­gan­ised hik­ing groups. Par­tic­i­pants are ad­vised well in ad­vance about the chal­lenges of the hik­ing trail, how they should dress and the equip­ment they need. As a fur­ther pre­cau­tion, roll calls are done at the start and end of the hike and the groups en­sure there are spot­ters through­out the hike to en­sure par­tic­i­pants stay on the des­ig­nat­ed trail.

No such pre­cau­tions were ob­served by Seenath and her fel­low hik­ers and she lost touch with them when they stopped to as­sist a young man who fell ill along the trail.In ad­di­tion to the dis­tress ex­pe­ri­enced by Seenath and her loved ones and the anx­i­ety felt over her by so many across the coun­try, large amounts of re­sources were ex­pend­ed dur­ing the search when she went miss­ing. It was an in­ten­sive and ex­pen­sive ex­er­cise in­volv­ing mem­bers of the De­fence Force, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, track­er dogs and some 60 vol­un­teers, in­clud­ing rel­a­tives and vil­lagers from Matu­ra, who combed the area for four days with­out suc­cess.

Aer­i­al sup­port was pro­vid­ed by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty he­li­copter as the group combed through thick bush­es in the North­ern Range.Mem­bers of the search par­ty al­so faced per­ils. In fact, one of them was in­jured when he ac­ci­den­tal­ly trig­gered a trap­gun.The tragedy of the drown­ings at the Flug­tag–which was in­tend­ed to be a fun event–in Ch­aguara­mas in 2011 is just an­oth­er of the re­cent ex­am­ples of how things can go so wrong in a rel­a­tive­ly short space of time.Too of­ten, safe­ty is un­der­es­ti­mat­ed by those out for a good lime.