UPDATE: August 31. I have added a full length narrated HD video on my Vimeo channel using the footage I shot on this adventure but was unable to edit or upload it to this blog while I was on the road. You can watch it here: https://vimeo.com/loudworld/nola2015

I forgot to mention that when I was being sold the 3 day HoHo pass I saw a pamphlet for a swamp tour on an airboat. This something I have wanted to do for a long time so I grabbed one.

Just prior to my nap I called the number and booked myself on the first one this morning. Pretty good deal actually, $90 includes pick up and return at my h'otel. The PU time is 0835 (Bill would like that!) so I am in the lobby at 0830 after setting my alarm!

I took my cell phone with me, as instructed, but I don't want to have to deal with it all day. I wore swim trunks as they said I would get wet. The bus driver called me at 0845 to say he was moments away, and I approached the bellman to surrender my phone for the day. Well, apparently that is a big deal! I tried to give it to him, with a $5 bill to have it dropped in my room, but they can't do that. Well, treat it like a suitcase? OK, fine, store it and give me a claim tag, out of the corner of my eye I see the bus turning into the driveway.

They have to call security and fill out an incident report! Its not a fuggin incident, its storage of a guest item. I see the bus waiting with its door open, this is not going quickly! Finally the valet lady comes to my rescue (yet again) and wades in to the situation and makes it all go away. She gives me a claim tag and points to the bus. Thank you Emery!

The bus ride is about 45 minutes to a point south of NOLA, and there is only 1 pick up after us so pretty seamless. The last 10 minutes of the drive we are passing huge houses on either side, mansions on stilts. We found out later these were the homes of crab, lobster & oyster fishermen.

This info comes from my airboat guide, so please don't sue me BP! It is hearsay. During the BP spill of April 2010 the fishing industry of the Gulf of Mexico was, in essence, shut down. BP hired all the fishermen of the GoM and basically paid them $100 000 a year not fish, but to keep their mouths shut. No complaining, no texting, no FaceBooking, no spreading dogma, ill-will or disparaging words.

Then after BP had decided the GoM was all cleaned up and the fishermen could return to work they paid out enormous sums to each FM based upon how many leases each owned. It was a one time; "Hey Sorry About All The Oil" payment but never ask us for a dime again!

Independent sources say the size of the spill was 4.9 million barrels equivalent, the BP site I was on says less than half of that. (For comparison the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound was 900 000 BoE) Suffice it to say even 2.4M BoE is alot! BP says they have spent 28 billion in cleanup and reparations. Some of that was evident in the mansions on a stick road. Our guide said he had buddy who had 25 000 oyster leases and after it was all said and done he netted (pardon the pun!) $40 million dollars. As usual some people suffered, some people did quite well.

Anyway we got to the airboat dock and waited about 30 minutes while other buses brought people in. Inside where we made payment they also had a few gators in a small pond. They are so stationary they could be inflatables, but they are real. The albino one shown here cost the business owner $60 000.00 after his previous one died. I guess they are pretty finicky. This one also has a double pupil in his left eye, but he never moved in all the time I was there so I can't confirm that as I could only see his right side.



I was on a 15 person boat, the tour guide lady suggested it as there was more room to move around, although that didn't really pan out. I shot a ton of video, but in the interests of staying only 3 days behind my blog I will edit and post them when I get home. Our airboat was similar to this one, but it also had a canopy over the pilot and 3 seats next to him. I ended up in the seat next to the pilot. An Indian fellow and his son were in the outboard seats.



The pilot handed me 2 sets of head phones and I passed on to Michael, the guy next to me. He asked what they were for, do we hear the narration through it? I said no, there is a friggin' airplane motor over your left shoulder. When the pilot, who's name escapes me but he did have more that a casual resemblance to Matt LeBlanc, fired up that GM 454 Mike put his headset on in a hurry. The engine's exhaust was slightly muffled but it didn't matter, the prop was so freakin' loud!

The propeller was fixed pitch and at idle it seemed to come from the center of my brain. There were many residences along the shoreline so we had to motor out at a slow speed but once we got into the channels of the Bayou Joey opened her up and that prop bit the air and shook you to your soul!

It was a visceral experience on par with the WWII biplane flight I took in Florida last year. (See KeyWest blog). The vibration was so intense it caused my Sony HD HandiCam to malfunction and stop recording. Luckily I also brought a GoPro HeroCam, so I would shoot GoPro when in motion and HandiCam when stationary.

Discussion beyond primitive hand signals was impossible when the engine was running. The guy next to me who minutes ago didn't know what the headphones were for was now pressing them against the sides of his head to escape the noise.

Joey told us that the bayou channels we were navigating through were man made, the Grandfather of the owner of Airboat Adventures had purchased huge swaths of swamp land long ago when you could buy them and then cut and dredged the channels to make them navigable. You can always recognize a man made bayou because it is straight, not something that occurs in nature.

Once we were at full speed it became apparent that controlling an airboat is not an exacting science, it kinda weaves and skids all over the place and you point it in the general direction you want to proceed. Making a 90 degree turn at full speed was more of a skid or a power drift, and very exciting!

Joey took us to his first favorite stop where there were maybe 4 ten foot gators. He turned off the 454 and the silence was deafening! He walked around to the front of the skiff and opened his cooler bungee corded to the skiff. On signal the gators converged on the boat, they know where their lunch comes from.

Out come the marshmallows. Now before the conservationists start screaming about feeding wild animals processed sugar lets get one thing straight. Gators are killing/eating machines. They don't eat MM's because they are addicted to corn syrup, they eat them because they are white. Gators are color blind so something white attracts them and it is a gator's policy to eat what is in front of it and ask questions later.



They are so indifferent to them that Joey balanced one on a gator's head and he swam around for 15 minutes with it right between his eyes, although in his defense his eyes do look outwards, not in.



Put a weiner on a stick and you can get these bad boys to come 4' out of the water. Suddenly my seating position next to Joey and 8' above the water was OK by me.



Joey told us a story to illustrate just how tough these guys are. Each year there is a hunting season for gators, but you are only allowed to use steel hooks, not stainless or galvanized steel. That is because sometimes the line will break and the hook will end up in the gators stomach. A gator can digest a steel hook, in about 3 days, but not treated ones!

Gator meat is big business so there are large gator farming operations all over the bayou. But there is little pampering. Once the gators hatch they go in a covered pond until they are big enough not to be carried away by Pelicans. Then they go into general population to grow for about 3 years at which point they will weigh about 200 lbs and yield 50 - 70 lbs of meat. Because every animal came from a base stock all farmed gators will have the exact same number of fins down its back, and they notch those fins in a pattern to identify the year of birth.

In order to sustain the overall population farming operations are required to live release 14 - 18% of their head stock into the wild each year. On the tour I was on some dumb Canadian asked if they possess the skills to live in the wild. Joey said their skills consist of opening and closing their mouth and they know how to do that from birth!

So we stopped in a few other places and Joey showed us some incredible sights and sounds and smells of the Bayou. When you are stopped you can hear another airboat coming for an hour before it gets there. Good thing the bayou is so big, the separation needed between the boats needs to be alot, and one can never follow another one, any debris caught in the prop wash would become a bullet!

Joey took us to an area where the water was only about 3" deep, here is where an airboat shines. It doesn't even need water, just damp mud or vegetation. The gators were half walking half wading in the mud and he plucked a baby one out and washed him off. Earlier I had seen him preparing some rubber bands, prolly for mouth control.

He was holding this 24" gator as nonchalantly as you would a kitten, he was even sort of cute. The gator that is! He got passed around amongst the passengers, some were eager to hold him, others recoiled in horror. I held him, and was mostly impressed as to how soft his belly was. He was very calm and docile, traits they grow out of very quickly!



I was going to kiss him (on a dare from my wife!) but Joey said he was full of bacteria and he didn't recommend it. I wasn't worried about being bit, they have about 2% of the jaw power opening their mouths as they do closing so just a few normal rubber bands can keep him shut.



From there we went to the inter-coastal waterway and ran alongside tugs pushing barges 1000' long and then all too soon we were headed back to the dock. The 2 hours on the water had flown by! When we tied up Joey's prowess as a pilot really showed as an airboat is really good at going forward, but can't reverse or go backwards. He started his landing about 250' out when he skidded the skiff into a pirouette that saw us make 1.5 full turns, slip in between his colleagues boats and settle gently against the dock. It was not this guy's first day!

We waited around for our bus to come back and when he arrived everyone hurried to get on board for the AC. My plan was to spend the balance of my day at the World War II museum so I asked the driver if he could drop me close or let me know which hotel to get off at but to my surprise he said it was only a small detour so he would drop me off at the front door.

We drove on in silence, everyone burned out by the heat and the prop wash, the radio station was playing rock hits from the 70's and 80's. I kinda zoned out for a bit and was awakened to the driver announcing the first stop was the WWII museum. I tipped him $10 bucks and thanked him for the rides, the special drop off and the classic rock!

The museum is another story all onto itself and I see I have rambled on for some time here so I am going to put that adventure into another entry.

Talk soon!