Cajun Country

On Thursday we left Houston and drove to New Iberia/Louisiana, where our friends Dave & Chris are living. It took us about 5,5 hours for 240 mi/380 km on I-10: horrible traffic, mostly heavy trucks on the road, and, in addition, a truck accident had happened at the TX-LA border. Arrived at 5 pm and got re-introduced to the Cajun Country's hospitality with a home-made gumbo at D&C's house.

Friday morning we drove around town to check out what's new. Though Main Street looks good with the newly designed Church Alley and a couple of historic buildings, it seems like in total economy isn't doing too well anymore, lots of businesses are gone, buildings standing empty. The oil industry (mostly off-shore) is/was important, but not doing as well anymore as before and the region is suffering.

The little Bayou Teche Museum on Main Street (pic) is always worth a stop: It's an instructive exhibition about the history of the town, about sugar cane farming, about the first immigrants from Malaga/Spain, about the Acadians/Cajuns (the French who went to Nova Scotia/Canada and were forced to move south later for religious reasons), the local food and traditions, music, about local celebrities like the famous artist George Rodrigue with his Blue Dogs‎, which became famous through Absolut Wodka ads, and famous mystery writer James L. Burke (if you haven't read his books yet, you should!).

Then we got our rice provision for the next months: Pecan Wild Rice at The Conrad Rice Mill. This is the oldest rice mill in America, founded in 1912. "Konriko", how it is called today, still is family owned and gives tours through the mill with its old machinery. Though, sugarcane is the #1 crop, rice and some cotton are coming next.

On to TABASCO, the pepper sauce plant on Avery by Island, owned by the McIlhenny Company, founded by Edmund McIlhenny in 1868. Here he developed the recipe for the Original Red Pepper Sauce and, to this day, the company is still family-owned and -operated on that very same island, though nowadays most peppers are grown in other places/countries and not on the island anymore. Besides the museum they have a huge company store where visitors can try the currently eight varieties of sauces, but also a variety of other products that they are offering.

The Jungle Gardens are a huge semitropical garden on McIlhenny's private land and stretch along Bayou Petite Anse on Avery Island. First azaleas (pic) were in bloom, camelias about to start blooming, and, there are impressive old live oaks with Spanish moss hanging down deep. Also, people come to see the alligators, which are, as well as turtles, living in the marshy, swampy region in abundance (though we only saw a couple of small ones today, like on the pic), and, there are thousands of snowy egrets that nest (in the background). The sun was out, it was pleasantly warm, and the day couldn't have been any better.

In the evening we had a great seafood dinner in nearby St. Martinville, together with Chris & Dave's friends Donald and Catherine. Donald is a sugarcane farmer and started with crawfish farming recently, Catherine is a retired school teacher and principal. We had crab and shrimp and catfish in different combinations, going well with a local beer, and enjoyed good conversation about crawfish and Mardi Gras (Donald is member of a Krewe and rides on one of the big floats), sugarcane and Cajun French (the dialect in the region, sort of an old French mixed with American English), food and travels. Always fun!