Swamp Tour

Batteries are recharged and I've uploaded the pics. On to the swamp tour!

We arrived at the swamp after about 45 minutes on the bus. I would have had a wonderful time looking out the window at the green, lush scenery if Ellie did not announce 15 minutes into the trip that she was about to pee in her pants. It was still a nice ride, but there was more than one moment of panic.

She made it (whew!) and we were on our way to the swamp.

The boats that took us on the swamp were big motor boats with long benches in the middle that held a large group. Our tour guide was a big, brawny cajun dude who had been giving these tours for a long time. Right away we passed by a cluster of houses along the river. Here's one of them:

You can see that it's up on stilts so that the water can come up pretty high before it hits the house. Well, it came up a lot higher than that during Katrina. There used to be more houses along the river where we were, but they're gone now. Only a few remain.

We floated along down the river and past a house that our tour guide told us had been picked up by the flood and carried down the river to rest in a different spot. The house stayed intact and everything was still in it. It's just now in a totally different place. Apparently his friend doesn't want to live in a place that you have to boat to, so he just got his stuff and left.

Soon enough, we saw what we had come to see. An alligator. Our guide called the alligator over by throwing marshmallows at it and holding out a hot dog on the end of a stick. We all jumped up with our cameras and video cameras. Here are a few of the shots we got:

It was amazing how close we could get to the alligator. It was a female, and she had no fear of us. The guide talked about how docile and not aggressive alligators are, unlike crocodiles. He said that alligators only like to eat meat and marshmallows, but they were spitting out the marshmallows when we were there. Each area of the swamp had a group of females and one male. The dominant male alligator would defend his territory, fighting all the other males to keep them away from his bevy of alligator beauties. Like this one:

Of course Greg's cell phone rang as we were all up taking pictures and he had to answer it. When I'm marveling at exotic wildlife and enjoying the pristine habitat that seems untouched by human hands, the last thing I want to hear is, "I'm going to need that network cable tomorrow."

He turned off the phone after that, and we were not interrupted again. We saw more alligators, lots of fish that would leap up out of the river and fly through the air, a white egret that flew around the boat, and some wild baby boars. Here they are:

We saw the baby boars' enormous mom, but I was not able to get a good shot of her. But here are some pics of the swamp---such a beautiful, serene, peaceful place.

Just as I was settling in and enjoying my surroundings and with an hour to go on the tour, Ellie announced she had to pee again. Her bladder is the size of a walnut. There was nothing we could do unless she wanted to hang off the side of the boat (she didn't) so we had to deal with more wiggling and panicking for the rest of the tour.

The swamp was remarkably free of bugs, probably because it was April. I have a feeling it's different in August. There were no flies or mosquitoes or anything other than dragon flies. Bugs were my biggest concern and I was quite relieved when we started out on the boat and I wasn't attacked at all. But after a bit, the tour guide took us further into the swamp and into an area where the trees were thick around us and the river narrowed. He parked us under a tree and stopped the boat. Right when he stopped the boat, three monstrous bees decided to check us out and flew around the overhang that was above our heads. They were huge and they had that kind of low, loud buzz that tells the primitive center of your brain that something extremely large is right next to you and it's growling.

The tour guide took that exact moment to settle in and tell us some stories. He had no intention of moving the boat away from whatever hive we were sitting under. Oh, he had so much to tell us. He gave an exhaustive review of all the movies and TV shows that were filmed in that very swamp, complete with a list of all the cast members. He talked in great detail about how Kelly Ripa of Regis and Kelly fame came to visit the swamp and how she mentioned them on her show. He talked about the time he got to act on film during a promotional video for the area. The guy waxed on and on like George Bernard Shaw while Ellie and I cowered lower and lower in our seats watching the mutant bumble bees buzz around the boat. Greg was able to keep it together and ignore the bees. He has nerves of steel.

Finally we moved. Thank God. We rambled through the water back to the dock, got off the boat and then sprinted to the bathroom before we got on the bus back to the hotel.

On the way back to the hotel, the bus driver showed us some more spots where you could see the effects of Katrina. Ellie asked me, "Why does everyone around here like talking about Hurricane Katrina so much?" I said, "I don't think they like to talk about it. But if a hurricane came to your town and destroyed so many things, you'd talk about it a lot, too." I told her that when the hurricane hit, we gathered up all her baby clothes and toys that she didn't play with anymore and we sent them to the kids here who lost all of their clothes and toys in the hurricane. I said, "So who knows? Maybe some of your stuff is still here in New Orleans." She liked that idea a lot.

We stopped in the French Quarter for dinner on the way back to the hotel, and I could tell even at 6pm or so that it was no place for a kid.

Stay tuned for the next day....