HELP! Need to find as much of this in vegan as possible!

[Earthly Delight]

So I got accepted to this program:

http://www.science.uottawa.ca/~gblou656/cours_tropical/index_trop.html

SO excited. Anyway if I can find a good vegan alternative for some of the following items, I have one year almost to buy it (the trip isnt until Feb 2009!) Any good suggestions would be extremely appreciated, preferably with PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. I too can google to find these online, but I need them to be dependable, I'd rather not get stung by a scorpion sort of thing..


Leather work gloves
Hiking boots/shoes
Insect repellant
Sunscreen


(If you can think of other things I should pack/see things on the lists that I missed while skimming it over, feel free to suggest away!)

[sleepydvdr]

So, there's no rush, eh? (the eh is my little Canada joke :o)

I get my footwear from mooshoes.com (everything there is non-leather).

As for gloves, a friend just 2 weeks ago let me use his gloves - they were incredible. Don't know if they were truly vegan, but they weren't leather. They had this rubber substance that gripped super tight. The purpose is that you can do things like pick up big pieces of furniture without slipping by simply putting your hands on the sides. I picked up one side of a refrigerator better than I ever had in the past. So much easier than regular gloves. They sell these at hardware stores. A fun place to go.

Insect repellant and sunscreen... I don't know. I say wear some cedar wood and carry an umbrella... LOL.

[Skylark]

For hiking boots, I like my Garmont Vegan Hikers I bought online from Vegan Essentials. They work well for dry trekking, but they wouldn't be good work boots, especially if you were wanting to clean them up on a regular basis. The heavy-duty cloth upper around the laces would be your main cleaning problem.

You could wear a wide-brimmed hat, long sleeves and long pants if that's a practical option to avoid buying non-vegan sunscreen. But do look at what Vegan Essentials has. It wouldn't surprise me if they have some sunscreen and insect repellent you could try out in the year before you go to find out what works for you. What works for other VBers may not work well with you given that your skin is unique.

[juno]

I use JASON sunblock. I'm not sure if it's vegan but it does have the Leaping Bunny logo on it.