April 29, 2008

April 29, 2008

We spend most of the morning shopping for groceries, and driving east to Lafayette, LA. I also have to spend a bit of time cleaning the bug bodies off the windshield and front end. Since reaching the Gulf Coast and its swarms of bugs, this has been a daily activity. Even then it takes two scrubbings to clean them all off.

Lafayette is the heart of Cajun country. This area is less about seeing things and more about absorbing the culture, so we stop at a country café for an authentic lunch of gumbo and red beans and rice. Cajun country is like another world hidden away in the swamps of Louisiana. They have a distinctly different language, accent, music, cuisine, and customs from the rest of the US. After lunch we walk next door to one of the five sections of Jean Lafitte National Historic Park. This one is the Cajun Cultural Center. Cajuns (Acadians) were the French settlers of Nova Scotia, who were exiled from that land after the British captured it. Eventually many of them settled here and lived in isolation. The center’s movie was good but the exhibits so-so.

We spend the evening in a local public park. After settling in we take a short walk along their Nature trail seeing lots of raccoons and we almost step on a snake. Fortunately it wasn’t one of the deadly ones.