Cajun Country

We left Frog City RV Park this morning, where we were affectionately known amongst the staff as "the cute young couple from Noo Zealand" - we're pretty different from the regulars in RV parks. There are two distinct groups - retired people (the majority stakeholders) and families with little children. Clearly we don't fit in either group, and age-wise we're somewhere in the middle (most parents seem significantly younger than us).

First stop - Lafayette, the unofficial capital of Cajun Country. The Cajuns are resettled Canadians - French settlers who were pushed out of L'Acadie (Nova Scotia) by the Brits in the mid-1700s and forced down to Louisiana, where they settled in the swamps, tamed the gators and made up some awesome recipes. "Cajun" comes from the local Native American and English-speakers' attempts at pronouncing "Acadians".

Lafayette is a fairly unassuming town - it has heavy-looking leafiness everywhere, a pretty little town centre and abundant parking. It also has the best food we've yet eaten in the USA at Dwight's Cafe, where we had brunch this morning. Two amazing omelettes: one stuffed with chicken, mushroom and cheese accompanied by "biscuit" (scones)  for Mark and one stuffed with peppers and cheese and accompanied by potato hash for Charlotte (with help from Mark with the hash). Both were heavy on the spice and really quite something. Once again though, helpings were massive and we haven't managed another meal all day. We wandered through Vermillionville (a cute bright coloured part of town) and back to Winston.

This is where the day got really cool.

The next place on our list was McGee's Landing. It took a bit of finding, but once we got over the levee, there it was: a big old hulking wooden building on stilts, a couple of sheds, an old houseboat on a trailer and an ancient, tired looking dog called "Dog". It's home to the Allemond family - Cajuns from way back and now the unassuming recipients of a number of awards for their top-notch restaurant (located atop the stilts) and their Swamp tours - McGee's is right next to Atchafalaya, the biggest swamp in the USA.

Charlotte was a bit nervous - the restaurant had a massive stuffed alligator in it, and newspaper articles on the walls claimed that the biggest gator Captain Curtis tussled with and killed was 15ft and 600lbs. Confidence was not lifted when Captain Curtis came out - a tiny, smiling 76 year old man in a denim onesie. After some reconsideration, Charlotte decided that Captain Curtis clearly had experience on his side (and Mark pointed out his big knife), so we got on the boat.

The boat trip itself was magic - we sailed around the swamp watching wildlife in action as narrated by Captain Curtis in his, at times indecipherable, musical Cajun French/American accent. Egrets, herons, osprey, cormorants, dense and pungent-smelling cypress forests growing out of the water and hyacinth growing on it. Captain Curtis taught us how to spot alligators by picking out where the bubbles were rising in the water - and then drove us right into the trees so he could hop out and dump a bunch of chicken in the greenery. A massive shift in the water made it clear he was feeding a gator - we think he's working on gaining the trust of one of the up and comers.

The highlight was definitely just up-swamp - where Curtis announced "Now we're going to have a party" and a telltale snout and set of eyes appeared and an alligator frolicked next to us for a good ten minutes. Curtis told us he'd been "working with" this one for 18 or so years - he estimated the gator's age at 50 (they can live up to 100 years), his length at 12ft and his weight at 500lbs. The gator wasn't aggressive in anyway, and calmly ate the chicken Curtis threw to him. Charlotte was particularly excited that Curtis spoke to the gator in French. The gator had some massive cuts on his tail - a result of fighting with other males during mating season, although Curtis was pleased with the way the wounds were healing.

It was a really amazing hour and a half - one of our biggest highlights so far, not just because of the swamp and the gators, but because Curtis himself was priceless. We could have floated around with him for 90 minutes and just listened to his stories without seeing a single animal and still felt like we got our money's worth.

We had our first glimpse of the mighty Mississippi as we crossed it on the way into Baton Rouge - Louisiana state capital. We wandered around the art deco Capitol, built by Huey Long, former Louisiana Governor and senator, who ordered the building of the Capitol during the Great Depression, proclaiming it had to be the tallest Capitol in the US (it's even taller than the one in Washington DC). He spent over $5m on it, when money was hard to come by. One would think this decision would be unpopular, however thousands of people came to pay their respects at Huey's grave in the Capitol grounds after he was assassinated in the Capitol building.

It turned out that Congress and state Senate were in session, so we dropped in. The very chatty security guard recommended we visit the Senate sitting, "cos it's more organised, less crazy". The noise and chatter in the Senate prompted us to ask what Congress must be like, if it was worse that that. So we popped in. They were debating a Bill proposing that death-row inmates should be able to waive their right to appeal, and thus expedite their own executions. Considering the life and death nature of the debate, we were quite surprised at the amount of chatting and sleeping going on. It was pretty lively, and no-one seemed to be listening to the two guys talking.

Baton Rouge feels like a public sector town - everyone is neatly dressed and extremely friendly and helpful, it's very tidy and clean, but it could let its hair down a bit more.

We walked alongside the banks of the Mississippi to get back to Winston.

If Louisiana keeps this up, it's front-runner for our favourite state award.