After my quiet day, I was back to serious exploring. After breakfast at @MaisonMouton B&B in Lafayette I headed west towards Rayne. My friends wondered why I was going there. As Leo said, it’s not much more than a dot on the map.
Rayne has proclaimed itself. “The Frog Capital of the World.” This started in the late 1800s when Jacques Weil and his brothers started a business exporting frogs to restaurants in France, where they were considered a delicacy.
These days I’m not sure too many people are eating frogs, but the town has an annual frog festival, and the streets are filled with frog statues. How could I resist seeing that? The reason for the abundance of frogs is that Rayne is in a marshy, swampy area.
A few dozen photos later, I set off on a backroad returning towards Lafayette. The drive took me through rice fields. East of Lafayette is a sugar growing region, west of the city it becomes a rice growing area. Super flat land, loads of precipitation, and water-retaining clay soil make for the perfect conditions to grow rice.
Rayne is the town of frogs; my next stop, Scott, proclaims itself the “Boudin Capital of the World.” Boudin is a Cajun specialty, smoked sausage filled with rice, pork, and herbs. There are at least a dozen places in Scott that sell freshly made boudin. I love visiting local food markets, so when I saw “The Best Stop Supermarket,” I stopped to have a look. The parking lot was packed.
Inside was a goldmine of local specialties. As I was photographing some of the products a portly man who clearly enjoyed his meals approached me. With little prompting, he proceeded to tell me about the foods I was looking at. “Boudin, that’s sausage, has to be smoked. We don’t eat sausage unless it’s smoked. After Katrina I spent time in Tennessee with relatives. I had to teach them about smoking, they just eat sausages plain.” He shook his head sadly, “That ain’t no way to eat ‘em.” He went on to explain the differences between hot sauces, crab boils and sugar cane syrups. His parting words were, “You have to try the cracklins, best in the area. Expensive, but dee-lishous.” Given that cracklins are made from pork skin, dropped into a vat of hot hog lard, where they crack and pop, I declined. I didn’t think my cholesterol would survive even a small portion.
Then I was off to Henderson to go on a swamp tour. @McGeesswamptours.com offers 90-minute boat tours through the Atchafalaya Basin Swamp. The Atchafalaya Basin is the nation’s largest river swamp, containing almost one million acres. It is significantly larger than the Everglades. It’s home to 65 species of reptiles and amphibians, more than 250 species of birds fly in or through it and loads of mammals make it home: black bear, nutria, fox, muskrat, beaver, otter, and raccoon.
I’ve been on swamp tours in this area, the Okefenokee Swamp, and the Everglades. But I’d never been on one this time of year, which made it quite different. For one thing, instead of the intense green I associate with swamps, the trees were changing color giving it a somewhat eerie look. Our guide, Ryan, warned us early on about carp leaping out of the water and jumping into the boat. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. Within minutes the enormous (up to 50-pounds) fish were leaping high out of the water and splashing down. They are an invasive species, Asian silver carp, that create all sorts of problems. We must have seen at least twenty of them doing their acrobatic leaps.
Ryan pointed out wood storks, spoonbills, osprey, and bald eagles, among other birds. Then he was determined to find an alligator. When it is cold, as yesterday was, they bury themselves in the ground to keep warm. He did find one juvenile by the shore, posing very nicely for us.
When the trip was over, I headed back to Lafayette and stopped briefly at the Christmas Market at @MoncusPark. As with everything else in this area, the main emphasis was on food, though there were also local craftspeople.
I ended the night at @HideawayonLee. There I met up with my friends Leo and Liz to listen to the music of @TheNoveauStringBand. They were great and the atmosphere festive. The music was infectious and got everyone on their feet to dance.
One of the things I love most about this area is that the people and super friendly and welcoming. Plus, they all seem to know each other. Having visited Leo and Liz many times, I recognized several people, and they greeted me like an old friend. At the end of their set, one of the fiddle players, John Buckelew “Buck”, came over to chat with us. He gave me a CD of their music, which I will treasure as a wonderful souvenir of a great evening.