Three days down in New Orleans. This place is so incredibly fascinating. The houses are all in similar style yet all very individual and you can spend hours just wandering up and down the steets looking at them. The neighbourhood our hostel is in has a random mix. Five blocks away are streets full of abandoned and badly damaged houses. Two blocks away are streets where there seems to be little or no damage. Our street is in the middle of a recently rebuilt area with block after block of brand new houses but all in the old style. There´s some underlying post-Katrina bitterness here - lack of federal help, rip-off contractors, and big companies using the damage as an excuse to tear down low cost housing and put up condos. But there´s also a lot of ¨Obama hope¨.

The Jazz fest has been superb so far. Heaps of people and the vibe is very chilled out and relaxed. Of the big names so far I´ve seen Joe Cocker, Mavis Staples, Dave Mathews Band and Earth,Wind and Fire. But it is the ones I didn´t know that have been the highlights. 75-year old Germaine Bazzle boogeying across the stage and a gospel choir that raised the roof and then somehow sang a sequence of notes that sounded just like a pipe organ.

And then there´s the food. I´m trying to pace myself. So far I´ve tried a po-boy, jumbalaya, creole stuffed bread and key lime tart. But there´s so much more. The Jazz fest is renowned for having the best collection of quality New Orleans cuisine around because all the local restaurants have a stall to sell their specialities. At the lower end of the culinary scale is Walmart which is the only thing resembling a supermarket we´ve managed to find so far. The rule there seems to be ¨if we can grow it, we can over-process it¨. Fresh stuff is a small percentage of the merchandise and Steph is finding the gluten-free thing really difficult.

Have pretty much decided not to do a South American tour just at the moment due to Swine Flu. Not because I´m worried about getting it but because I don´t want to jeaopardise getting back into US/Canada due to being in an exposure risk area if it becomes more serious.