I was in New Orleans for a conference and checked off some things on my list that I always wanted to do (Preservation Hall Jazz, the World War II Museum, lunch at Cafe Amelie). Still, I found myself with an unencumbered Sunday afternoon in June, and thought to myself, "I've never seen a Cajun guy feed marshmallows to an alligator in the swamp, so maybe I should do that!" I have a special affinity for Louisianan swamps and Cajuns since that's where my father came from. This would mean I am half Cajun, obviously. (The half that likes spicy food, but not the half that is allergic to shellfish.) My father lived on the bayou not far from where this swamp tour would happen (LaFourche Parish) until he was about eight years old. He mentioned it often: pelicans and egrets, alligators and crawfish, sugar cane and molasses.
Okay, truth be told, I had no idea alligators like to eat marshmallows and that Cajuns like to toss them to alligators, but I found this out on the Swamp Tour. Our guide, Captain Reggie,
narrated a very informative (and fun) tour of the swamp. Bayous, he explained, are naturally-occurring thoroughfares through the swamp while canals are man-made ones. There is marshland in the swamp, too. So, the swamp, as they define it here, is the whole ecosystem which includes bayous, canals, and marshes.
We rode on a flat-bottomed boat almost exactly like the Salt Marsh Safari boat I'm familiar with in Cape May.
My ride
Other visitors were riding on large and small fan boats, but these things are noisy. As Captain Reggie explained, "You wouldn't learn anything."
A smaller fan boat (noisy)
A larger fan boat (noisier)
This swamp is in Jean LaFitte National Historic Park and Preserve, specifically the Barataria Preserve. We saw trees, moss, dragonflies, and yes, ALLIGATORS. Early in the ride we saw a small alligator swimming around by himself, and he came right over to the boat. Captain Reggie explained that alligators don't see the white marshmallows he tosses, but they feel the vibrations when it hits the water. Besides luring the alligators closer to us, those marshmallows allow us to see the reptile chomp down on something not alive (like a tourist).
The first reptile we encountered
We toured through some interesting heat-tolerant flora on our way through the swamp to see even more marshmallow-eating alligators. The stuff hanging from trees is sphagnum moss, and according to Captain Reggie, "Yankees actually buy that stuff." Yes, he's right, once or twice my non-Cajun Yankee side actually bought that stuff for various craft projects. It is used to stuff boat cushions, too.
Sphagnum moss hanging from tree
It looks tropical...
At one point on the tour, we passed a Cajun graveyard. One of Captain Reggie's grandmothers is in there, and he confirmed what I always suspected: when the area floods, the coffins can pop out of the ground and float around. I stopped listening at this point because I have nightmares about my long-dead ancestors floating around in their coffins during catastrophic floods. I started listening again when the Captain told us that the hill in the middle of the cemetery is an ancient Native American burial mound going back to 500AD.
At one point during our tour, Captain Reggie found a breezy spot to stop and give the boat a rest. From out of a closet that none of us had noticed, he brought out his companion, Elvis, a baby alligator. Cool enough to see one up close, but each of us got to hold it. (Kids got to wear Elvis on their heads.) I did hold Elvis, and here follows photographic proof. He squirmed a little, but more interestingly made soft little sounds almost like a dove cooing.
Margaret and Elvis (profile)
Elvis, straight-on
Finally, we saw alligators. I counted seven simultaneously swimming around our boat and grabbing whatever marshmallows they could.
See the marshmallow about to be eaten?
This was a fabulous tour in spite of the June Louisiana heat. Of course it was going to be hot, and I did the best I could dressing comfortably and sipping my water. My big worry had been mosquitoes, so I bought a yellow spiral bracelet which was supposed to form a forcefield around me unpenetrable by mosquitoes who love me. I can't tell you if the bracelet worked, but I can tell you no one else was complaining about mosquitoes.
After I was delivered back to my New Orleans hotel, I Googled Captain Reggie. He said some Disney movie character was named after him, and I was curious about that: Ray in "The Princess and the Frog"? I'm way behind on Disney movies, but I found something even more interesting. Here's Captain Reggie himself (the "Alligator Whisperer") feeding marshmallows to alligators on someone else's tour. You can hear him saying "Ici!" ('here' in French) to the reptiles. Now why didn't I take a video???
The River Road between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is actually a network of roads on both sides of the Mississippi River. Sugar cane was the big money crop here (and is still grown here), and the grand plantations built on sugar remember a grand lifestyle. We toured three of these, perfecting out hot-weather saunters on a sunny June day in Louisiana.
First on the agenda was Laura, a Creole plantation built in 1805 in Vacherie, Louisiana. The tour through the house and grounds was fantastic and we felt the most authentic of the three we'd see. We learned that these houses are supported by huge underground pyramids of bricks because the earth is so soft and wet. The house is painted in traditional Creole colors which set it apart from the white Greek Revival mansions we would see next.
Another unusual fact about Laura is that since its owners were of French descent, they saw no problem with women inheriting property. (The English didn't allow it.) Three generations of women ran the Laura plantation, ending with Laura Locoul Gore, upon whose memoirs the tours are based. The first-hand accounts of family and house history helped make this tour compelling.
It's also interesting to learn that the folktales told by the Senegalese slaves at Laura were recorded by a Louisiana State University professor and eventually became known as the B'rer Rabbit tales.
Just upriver from Laura, and still in Vacherie, sits Oak Alley with its iconic 300-year-old live oak canopy. This shot seems to be everywhere, but I had to take a few of my own. The trees predate the current house and the levee across the street. The 28 oaks were planted by the French owner of a much more modest house exactly 80 feet apart. The idea is for the two lines of massive oaks to draw the cool river breezes towards the house and sauntering people. One hundred years after that modest house, the current mansion was built on the site with 28 Doric columns, eight feet in circumference. (That's thick, but consider those huge live oaks are about 30 feet around!) People used to sit on the veranda , sipping mint juleps, to watch the ships passing on the river. That's no longer possible since the levee hides the river from view. On the other hand, that levee protected the region during and after Hurricane Katrina.
Our third plantation visit was Houmas House in Burnside, Louisiana. This one gets the prize for the most interesting gardens. Exotic, tropical flowers, ponds, fountains, whimsical garden accents, and buildings populate the grounds along with live oaks, magnolias, and crape myrtles. There is color everywhere. This Greek Revival "sugar palace" was begun in the early 1800s and finished in the 1840s by his son-in-law. Gorgeous hand-carved furniture and fine art decorate the house along with noteworthy architectural elements. The three-story free-standing wooden spiral staircase caught my eye, as did the older, colorful French House connected behind the mansion which contains an open-hearth kitchen. By the way, men are required to climb it first so that women don't accidentally flash them any...ankle. Re-watch the movie "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte"--it was filmed here and Bette Davis got to stay in the house. Today the current owner lives in the mansion, and it was a little odd to come upon his historically-correct bedroom and walk through it on the tour. Odder still, the wedding picture display of his pair of Golden Retrievers...
