Bayou tour
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Ever been through a lock in a canal? It turns out that you don’t have to go through the Panama Canal to go through a lock. We went on a bayou tour by boat from New Orleans, and the first thing was to go through a lock to get into the bayou. There’s something funny about the elevation of New Orleans. If it’s not actually below sea level, at least it’s below the level of the Mississippi, and there are levees all around it to keep the river out. To get to the bayou, you need a lock. You can see the big gates at the end of the lock opening as we got up to bayou level.
I had heard about bayous so much that it just seemed like something we had to do. The shrimp boats, houses right up to the water’s edge, and overhanging subtropical foliage made it look very different from the New England fishing villages around here.
Light planes with pontoons also were part of the picture:
Nobody was eaten by an alligator, though the guide tried to make it sound like a possibility.