Lafayette to New Orleans

We awoke customarily late and were undecided as to what we should do for the rest of the day. The resolution to this problem was as simple as it was random – we would go to the world’s one and only Tabasco sauce factory and then on to New Orleans.
But first – after days of saying that we would do it and not actually having done it we took the Trailblazer for a bath, in the form of a drive-through carwash. Everyone was excited by this prospect except for gentleman John, who took an absolute pounding up on the antenna – but still managed to hang on, even though he lost his flag – he’s such a trooper!
The Tabasco factory on Avery Island was as strange as expected – we got to see an infomercial about the history of Tabasco and how to make it, and then got a tour of the factory itself which Carl (the budding engineer that he is) particularly enjoyed. We then went on to the shop where they had free samples of all sorts of Tabasco related products – including Tabasco Coke which was just weird. We predictably gorged ourselves and then hit the road, bound for New Orleans.
After a brief detour in which we found out what a sugar cane plantation smells like and that the yellow bowl restaurant was closed, Carl had another subway sub that was bigger than his head, Prentice called about 6 times, more real talk and we made it to New Orleans safely.
After spending about half an hour cruising around the city and trying to sort out our accommodation, we checked into the India House hostel. New Orleans is a crazy place – on the one hand, it’s obvious that it used to be, and to a degree still is a huge party town, but on the other the lingering effects of Katrina are still blatantly obvious. There are still heaps of houses that are boarded up and in some places whole streets that are completely unoccupied. Apparently when Katrina hit all of New Orleans’ gun shops got completely looted and almost none of it has been recovered. That combined with the fact that abandoned buildings make a good place “for crackheads to hang out” according to the guy running the hostel – we were kinda on edge.
To ease our fears (and those I’m sure of our readers) we got drunk and hit the town with some of the other people from the hostel. We did the touristy thing and hit Bourbon St and were not disappointed. Carl’s dancing was once again a highlight. The one downer however was Wonders getting separated from everyone as we left the pub. He had no money, Carl wasn’t answering his phone, my phone was out of action due to my own poverty so he had no option but to walk home which he reckons took him close to an hour. This was spectacularly at odds our trusty lonely planet guidebook which recommends: “New Orleans has a high violent-crime rate; it’s not a city to be careless. Spring for a cab to avoid dark walks” Carl awoke to find the following message : “hey dickhead – I’m dying here. Duck you 2”. Great road trip memories.
Until next time,
Jez