On the morning of Day 15 we had a breakfast of beignets with chicory coffee at a cafe across the street from our hotel. We had booked an airboat swamp tour with a company called Ragin' Cagin for early that morning. We were picked up by a company-provided shuttle bus at 8:45am and were taken to a privately-owned parcel of swampland off Highway 90 about 30 minutes west of the French Quarter. The airboat ride, which lasted about one hour and forty-five minutes, took us along the canals and swamplands to the north of Lake Cataouatche. Our captain (and guide) stopped numerous times along the thickets of the swamp; gators quickly approached our airboat because they knew it was snack time. The captain would dangle raw chicken drumsticks attached to a stick and wire and the gators came right up to the boat to feed. The captain of another airboat was able to lift the head of one gator and pet it gently on its head. Incredible. We returned to New Orleans and had a quick lunch of shrimp po-boy sandwiches and jambalaya before embarking on a guided walking tour of Cemetery #1, the oldest extant cemetery in the city, established in 1789. The walking tour lasted an hour and we got to see some of the more interesting tombs and learned the stories (or tales) behind some of the people who have been laid to rest there. Afterwards, we walked through the Louis Armstrong Park nearby before heading towards Jackson Square near the riverfront. Included in the pictures below are photos taken on our visit to Bourbon Street from the previous evening. We left New Orleans the following morning after breakfast and began heading back to Florida.
The Bayou and the Big Easy