So, today was a bit of a crap shoot. We headed to Houma (pronounced Home-a), Louisiana, about an hour south of here, on the chance that we would be able to go on a swamp tour. We opted for a swamp in the heart of the Louisiana wetlands on the Gulf coast (Houma has 2,500 sq miles of swamps and wetlands), rather than one of the more corporate tours nearer to New Orleans. However, when we tried to call yesterday to book, there was a language issue, and the feller Roger talked to wasn't with the swamp tour, but he said he'd pass on the message. We were just to show up at 2. Price is $40 each, but it's a minimum $120 for the airboat to go out, so if we were the only two people, it would be $60 each. "Oh, and if it's rainin' they don't go out."  Also, this is not prime time to see gators, as it's usually too cold this time of year. We were told by someone else that if the temperature is below 70 degrees, you won't see a thing on a swamp tour. So, with a fog and heavy clouds, and a 50 percent chance of thunderstorms, but with the forecast for 76 degrees, we headed out. Worst case scenario was that we'd have a roadtrip into bayou country ... possibly in the rain.

We finally got there around 1:00 (it's not really in Houma, but further south near a little place called Gibson) . Bayou Black Swamp Tours doesn't have its own office - it kind of runs out of a shack on the Bayou Black "marina" (I use that term loosely, as it's more of a dock on the swamp). The feller there said "he don't keep track a Wayne. He may show up if he ain't too hungover."  So we headed into the little village of Gibson's (nothing much there, but we did find a post office to buy stamps for postcards), then headed back to the "marina". By then, there was another couple for the tour (a gay couple from Texas), and by 2:00, there were another two guys, one from the area, and his guest from D.C. 2:00 came and went, and we started to wonder, but then we heard the airboat in the distance. It was only 2:10 when Wayne Jr pulled up in his airboat with the 454 cubic inch motor. Roger was duly impressed.

Wayne Sr and Wayne Jr are gator hunters. Wayne Jr is about 35 - 40 years old, and has been huntin' gators for 30 years. He has a pretty thick accent, but we got the hang of it and could understand him after the first few minutes . Last Sept, he got 40 gaters himself. He shoots them rather than using snares. He said gator huntin' is a livelihood here, and that in Louisiana, about 1 million gators have been killed since 1972. They got $26 for a 9 ft gator last year - it used to be $50. Apparently the gator industry has also been hit hard by the economy.

Since the airboat motor is freakin' loud, we had ear protection to wear. When he was going flat out (this is when Roger was grinning from ear to ear), we couldn't hear a thing. Wayne Jr obviously knows the swamps like the back of his hand. We saw six 10-12 ft huge gators, as well as a number of little guys, a snake, a turtle, two eagles, many marsh birds, and a lot of nutria (swamp rats that look like beavers but with no tail). Apparently nutria were introduced to Louisiana from South America in the early 1900's and have devastated the plant life in the swamps. There is a $5 bounty per nutria killed.

We got up really close to some really big gators . Wayne Jr said they are pretty dormant this time of year (winter). If we got that close when they are more active, they wouldn't have been so docile. We did see some big ones dive into the water when they got tired of staring at us, but mostly they are really good at just staring you down. My favorite guy was a huge guy that was trying to look so intimidating, but he had a water lily on his head, so he just looked really silly. Wayne Jr called it his toupee. ;o)

The other people on the tour brought up all the new swamp shows on TV. There is one called Swamp People that has folks from around this neck of the woods. One of the people on the show, Liz, is Wayne Jr's friend. He joked that he's too pretty to be on the show cuz he has all his teet. LOL

Wayne said that alot of the routes he took thru the swamp (not that he needed routes ... the airboat could go anywhere, and it did) were old logging trails from when the loggers cut down all the 1,000 year old cypress trees in the 1890's. The ones that are left are only 100 or so years old.

We were out in the swamp for two hrs, and we had a great time. The young guy from D.C. was pretty freaked out by the gators, and his friend (uncle maybe?) was a joker and kept scaring him, like banging on the boat when a gator would dive underneath us, or throwing plant pods at the gators to make them move. We had a lot of laughs at his expense. He was ready to go back after an hour.

Anyway, after the tour, we headed back into Houma and had a lite supper (me salad, Roger stirfry). The rich, fried foods are starting to weigh us down. Ugh.

(If you want to listen to some Cajun music, go to the Houma website at http://www.houmatravel.com/. They have Cajun radio playing. ;o)