... it just occurred to me that there ARE Amerindian people in Guyana who do live in the interior and do traditionally go barefoot. I don't know if they traditionally used some form of footwear in certain areas or not. So perhaps wearing footwear may have suppressed some natural ability to be on the alert for snakes etc. (or else people knew the area like the back of their hand and stuck to the routes that would have the most minimal chance of such encounters).
Just playing 'devils advocate' to myself there for a minute.
Still stand by the bicycle thing though. Bikes are wicked (meaning good)... keep you fit, get you places faster than a car often in our clogged-up cities, and you can feel the wind whipping by you, hear the birds...
Well it's another brief burst from the internet caf, reason later...