Bayous, belles and biscuits

Writing this post from our hotel room in Le Pavillon on Poydras Street in New Orleans, it seems unbelievable that the world of Acadia (that's the Cajun world) is just a swamp or two away. We wound our way east from Houston through Southwest Louisiana to get to the Big Easy and passed through at least three different cultural enclaves along the way.

Louisiana has the headiest mix of cultural influences I've come across in any state so far. Africans from Senegal, French-Canadian refugees, Spanish, Native American (by name only, it's hard to feel the presence of the indigenous people here) and a myriad others have sparked each other off to fuel greater and more wild culinary and musical fires than could be expected in such a saturated place.

On Wednesday we ate corn dogs, fried chicken and fried catfish. We listened to Cajun music in a restaurant and camped in a state park between a levee and a swamp. For our next blog, we may have to provide a glossary of terms. I'm struggling with the lingo almost as much as I struggled to decipher Costa Rican Spanish.

We had a first minor calamity with our beloved lovemobile which was quickly remedied by some excellent mechanics at 'Cajun Transmissions'. We lost a vital piece of rubber from our transmission on a dirt road and cruised around in 3rd and 4th for a good few miles before it got replaced. But we're back in the saddle again and hoping for a trouble-free passage to the Big Apple.

We're lapping up everything New Orleansian and thoroughly enjoying the company of Don and Jenny.

R