Whistling Rails ~ From Sea to Shining Sea: Day Two in New Orleans

Saturday, March 28^th

This morning we enjoyed another breakfast at Red Gravy, accompanied by a man playing his guitar in the restaurant.

Knowing that we had to be back at our hotel at a certain time to board the bus for the swamp tour we were about to go on, we walked to the shops at the River Walk and spent just a little while there. I bought a pair of sandals because it appeared as if the weather wasn’t going to get any cooler, and we shopped in a couple other stores as well. The mall there is extremely long and stretched out, so it takes a while to just get from one end of it to the other.

With a bit of time left before we had to walk back to our hotel, we grabbed a container of pretzel bites from Auntie Anne’s and ate them while we walked back.

The drive to and from the swamp tour was despicable. The lady driving the bus was quite obviously a party girl, and it didn’t help that the loud group of girls on the bus were also celebrating one of their birthdays. The lady cranked up the disgusting music for all the young people on board, who were allowed to drink as much beer as they wanted on the bus and tour boats. She also continued to talk all about what adults are going to see on Bourbon Street, even though she was aware of the fact that there were children on the bus, and even prefaced everything she said with the statement that there were children on board. It was if she was intentionally trying to poison the minds of children.

Fortunately, we found my Mom’s iPod and turned on an audio book, using an ear bud in one ear and plugging the other ear with our fingers. The music was so loud that we could still hear it even then, but at least we had something else to listen to.

The tour itself was fantastic. A smaller alligator, about four feet long, came right up to our boat and jumped for the hot dogs that our tour guide and other tour guides had on flexible sticks. They also tossed marshmallows to the alligators. We learned a lot of interesting facts about alligators, including the fact that when it’s really cold, alligators can hibernate at the bottom of swamps and slow their heart beats to two to three beats per minute, only come up for one breath of air per day, and not eat for four months. I changed my mind about alligators, and think the small ones are actually pretty cute.

While leisurely riding through some areas of the swamp and speeding through others at thirty miles per hour, we learned a lot of information about the beautiful swamp and the many plants we were seeing. Did you know that Henry Ford used Spanish Moss (which is neither Spanish, nor moss; it is a plant in and of itself, and is not a parasite like true moss is) in the first Model-T for padding in the seats? It was his first recall, because the moss contained a lot of insects. The Spanish Moss we saw hung beautifully over the glassy surface of the water. Some areas of the swamp looked like slabs of black granite, while others resembled hazy chocolate milk. It was quite picturesque!

Close to the end of our tour, we rode down to the end of an inlet of the swamp and caught site of a couple large, feral pigs. They were muddy and hairy, but oh, so cute! Shortly after this we saw the baby pigs! They were even cuter, with their high-pitched squeaking noises. We stayed near the pigs for a while, watching our tour guide throw dried corn into one of the pig’s mouths, and toss handfuls of it to the rest of the pigs. He told us that they’re so “piggy,” that they would stay there and eat until every single kernel of corn had been eaten. We also learned that people can hunt those pigs at any time, even on state land, without any limits because their population is so out of control, and they are so destructive. One of the large pigs jumped halfway onto our boat and splashed mud on one of the girls. It was pretty amusing later on when she asked our tour guide if the mud on her pants was okay, as if it was toxic.