Bob the tour guide

The Daigrepont family has a 12 seater van. It’s used for hauling music equipment to and from gigs from Bourbon Street to Nova Scotia. The other day, it was used to haul all of us to the swamp. Brian and I have never been big on the ‘touristy things’, we often feel that they’re overrated, too crowded, or just plain expensive. Bruce Daigrepont knows pretty much very single person in a four hour radius of New Orleans. His friends have a friend who runs a tour company on Lake Martin, so we headed that way. The owner has a background in Zoology so I was excited about what may be in store for us!

When we pulled up to the lake I felt pretty confident we were in for the real deal. There’s three small well-used and loved boats, two guys who can’t be anyone else other than the owners based on their bucket caps and leathered skin. The rest were an odd assortment of people with enough ball caps to outfit a baseball team. Bob, our tour guide, did a quick introduction and we all said where we were from. Half of us were the Daigrepont gang and the other few were from various states and also Switzerland. After piling into the boat we slowly made our way into the swamp.

Egret

Within 3 minutes of being in the boat we spotted our first alligator. Bob slowed the already painfully slow boat so we could all get a glimpse up close-ish. As the tour continued we saw a plethora of birds including Egrets and Snake Birds (Anhinga). Everywhere we looked there was another alligator; some as big as 8 feet and others as small as 1 and 1/2 feet. We got a little too close for comfort to some of the alligators, but Bob reassured us that the 12 foot pole in the boat was his ‘just in case’ pole. One thing I truly enjoyed about the tour was that there was no messing with the animals to try to get them to do something impressive or scary. No feeding, poking, yelling, or teasing. Just a tiny slow boat wading through the swamp, soaking in the nature.

Alligator opening mouth for temperature control

Easily the best $20 I’ve ever spent was on that boat. I’ve never had the opportunity to get that up close and personal with so many beautiful and maybe even slightly scary animals before. So, go on now, go find Bob in the swamp!

Great Blue Heron