Gators and wild hogs

We were looking forward to our adventure at Cajun Encounters. Where we thought we would get to ride some alligators. It turns out I I misread the brochure, it said ride along beside of gators, not ride the gators. Oh well, probably for the best.

We caught the bus from the downtown area and headed for Honey Island in Slidell, LA, just north of New Orleans. Our driver was Danielle. She had one more stop to pick up after us. At this stop she stood up and announced; “now people it is a 40 minute ride to Honey Island and I cannot stop once the bus gets on the interstate. So, if you had a lot of coffee this morning, now is your time to go get rid of some of that coffee. If you were out drinking late last night, now is your time. I know you think you are ok now, but then we cross Lake Pontchatrain and it is a big body of water and after 15 minutes of that you are going to start squirming. I can’t stop on the bridge. So now is your chance.” No one budged. As we pulled away I thought of an acronym taught to me recently NPUT (Never Pass Up a Toilet). Too late.

The bus arrived to Cajun Encounters with no issues, but I am pretty sure 80% of the bus headed for the toilets when we got off, because she reminded us that the boat tour is 2 hours and there are no toilets on the boat. They must have had a few bad experiences in the past with potty breaks.

The boat held 20 people, so we got to meet some new friends. The “Swamp Tour” was a mix of swamp and river. We headed down the river for about 5 minutes before we headed to a gator hole. As soon as we pull into the cove of the river we see alligators swimming around. Then they start heading for the boat. Captain Tony assures us that he has never had one jump all the way into the boat.
They do raise their head up out of the water and snap at the boat. More on this later, but for now we move on to the swamp part of the tour. I think this guy is a bass tournament fisherman, because we zoom to the next spot.

We start down the river and Captain Tony told us about the bald cypress and the tupelo tree. The tupelo tree looks like the bald cypress, but the bark of the tupelo tree will be gray and fairly smooth, sometimes with checkering. The cypress has bark that is a bit shreddy toward the base, and has a sort of orange tint. But the tupelo tree is often hollow, and the honey bees build hives in the trees, thus producing Tupelo Honey. And this is why it’s called Honey Island.

As we weave our way through the swamp we begin to see wild hogs, racoons, a night herring and a few other species of wildlife. The wild hogs come right up the boat. Tony warns us not to try to pet the hogs, because they will bite. He provides them some food and we hang with the hogs for a while. But then it’s time to weave our way our of the swamp and zoom down the river again.

We passed by the “Cajun Village” on Honey Island, where the houses are built right at water level. Water went above the roof of most of these houses during Hurricane Katrina. I hope none of them were Waiting on a Sign from God..

We went to another alligator hole and saw more gators (and Tony fed more alligators). I think the hogs understands the don't bite the hand that feeds you, but I am not sure the gators do.

That caps off a great trip to NOLA. Tomorrow we head back to Mobile.

Lesson Learned:
If you feed wild animals every time the boat pulls up, it doesn’t take long until they come running as soon as the boat shows up. But, they are amazing animals, none the less.