Our guide Skip steers our tour boat through the Atchafalaya Basin swamp, North America’s largest wetland. Cypress and tupelo stumps rise sentinel-like out of the water, while graceful snowy egrets perch just out of reach of watchful alligators.
Skip, whose real name is Romy, acquired his nickname when he was still a babe in arms. “I’ve been on boats since I was a baby,” he says. He took to boats like a duck to water and has the same easy familiarity with the beautiful Atchafalaya swamp.
Cutting a 15-mile-wide path across southern Louisiana, Atchafalaya Basin is west of the Mississippi River, between Lafayette and Baton Rouge. More than 100 miles long and spanning almost a million acres, it is larger than the Florida Everglades and the perfect place to enjoy a boat ride with McGee’s.
A Leisurely Cruise of the Atchafalaya
McGee’s also does airboat tours but the noise of the airboat isn’t conducive for seeing wildlife. So we’re experiencing the swamp in a more leisurely fashion, aboard a traditional flat-bottomed boat. McGee’s also offers canoeing, photography excursions, and sunset tours.
With an abundance of nutrient-rich water feeding into it from 32 states, three Canadian provinces and the Mississippi River, Atchafalaya Basin is one of the richest areas in the country for wildlife.
Most Louisiana swamp tours depart from New Orleans so it’s a treat to do it from Lafayette, where there are fewer tourist boats. Apart from one airboat coming into land, and two guys fishing from an aluminum runabout, we don’t see another boat during our 90-minute tour.
Stories of the Swamp
The only noise breaking the silence is Skip, who hardly catches a breath as he talks non-stop. Not that we’re complaining. His knowledge and stories are pure gold.
Skip wears a red and black flannelette jacket and has a flowing beard that looks like Spanish moss. Cypress trees in the swamp are draped with Spanish moss, which native Americans called “tree hair.”
Perhaps it’s because of the seemingly endless number of cypress stumps rising out of the water, but there’s a haunting feel to the landscape. Pronounced “uh-CHA-fuh-LIE-uh,” Atchafalaya gets its name from the Choctaw phrase for “Long River.” Three native tribes inhabited the area, Skip telling us that when they killed the garfish that proliferated in these waters, it was “like killing a bear — the fish had scales like armor.”
Acadians Become Cajuns
Not only was the swamp a lifeline for native Americans, so it was for Acadians who were exiled in 1755 from Nova Scotia, Canada. These French-speaking people wandered for years seeking refuge before some of them settled in the Atchafalaya Basin, the word Acadian morphing into ‘Cajun’.
“We were called swamp rats or levee rats,” says Skip, who still bristles at the fact that for a long time they weren’t allowed to speak their language. The story of schoolchildren being punished for speaking French is told in the 1890s schoolhouse in nearby Vermilionville Historic Village.
Logging, hunting, trapping, and fishing provided for thriving communities in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and Skip is nostalgic when he talks about what life was like during that time. “If you lived in the swamp, there was a library boat that came out here. It’s a shame we took education more seriously in the 1920s than in the 2020s.”
Abandoned But Not Deserted
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 led to a mass exodus of people making their living from the swamp and by 1953, after years of rising waters, the once thriving community of Bayou Chene was abandoned when the post office closed. Today, it lies buried under 12 feet of silt.
Relics are scattered throughout these waters: the wreck of a 1920s supply boat, the remains of a railway bridge destroyed in the 1927 flood.
Yet some people enjoy the space and solitude and continue to live off the land here. With some of the best fishing and hunting in the country, it’s easy to have a simple life.
Skip points to a houseboat in the distance, whose 74-year-old owner is “not old, he’s vintage. The world’s going to end and he won’t know about it because he’s out there chillin’.”
Eating the Swamp
It’s not uncommon to see two or three generations of one family in fishing boats on the swamp. Skip greets a pair who are putting out hoop nets to catch catfish.
“It’ll be on someone’s buffet soon,” he says of their catch. “You have a good day y’all,” he yells to them. Turning to us, he says: “People all say hello here because we’re a community, not just a coffee.” (Community Coffee is a popular local brand.)
Much of Skip’s repartee centres around food. It comes naturally in this part of the world where the appreciation of food is a big part of everyday life. “When they’re having breakfast, Cajuns are already talking about lunch,” he says.
Louisiana is the world’s largest producer of crawfish and much of it comes from the Atchafalaya Basin. The freshwater crustaceans are symbolic of Lafayette and a source of Louisiana pride. Once a food of the poor, it is now enjoyed by all. Skip laments that it costs him $150 to feed crawfish to his family of five these days.
Crawfish have become a staple of Cajun and Creole cooking, featuring prominently on local menus. A list of restaurants serving crawfish is posted on the Lafayette Travel website so you can design your own crawfish trail.
It’s Great To Be Cajun
Skip says McGee’s is “trying to reinforce how great it is to be Cajun.” When it began operating swamp tours in 1977, Skip did some tours in New Orleans to get a feel for what was being offered there. “What we found out was the kind of tours we did not want to run,” he says. “They bagged the Cajuns. It gave me the red ass so bad.”
Skip brings a personal and local flavor to the Atchafalaya tour, but there’s no doubting that the wildlife is the star of the show. The habitat is home to around 100 species of fish and other aquatic life, 65 species of reptiles and amphibians, and 300 species of birds.
We spot plenty of egrets, ibises, and blue herons, but at other times the swamp is home to migratory birds including the largest wintering population of American woodcock in North America. It also has the largest nesting concentration of bald eagles in the south central United States.
We’re fortunate to spot a flock of Roseate spoonbills which visitors don’t always get to see. “They turn pink if they eat enough crawfish,” says Skip. Even at a distance, their flamboyant bright pink colour and distinctive spoon-shaped bills are a sight to behold. “They look like gumbo spoons,” says Skip. “Why does everything remind me of food?”
Seriously Wild Life
Every now and then we are splashed when Asian carp leap dramatically out of the water. “If you get splashed, that’s a Cajun baptism,” says Skip.
Carp were introduced in the 1970s to eat some of the invasive species in the swamp. “No-one likes eating carp, not even the Cajuns. If the Cajuns won’t eat them, you know they’re disgusting.”
Predators and other animals in the area include rabbits, squirrels, wild boar, opossums, raccoons, beavers, and nutria. A highlight for many visitors is to spot a bear or alligator. We don’t have any luck with bears. Conservation efforts have meant the Louisiana black bear is no longer endangered, but it is most active at night.
Alligators are more easily spotted. Some are sunning on the riverbanks and gliding silently through the water, while trails of bubbles indicate others are lurking too. One big fella, who Skip recognizes as Big George, surprises us by coming right up to the boat.
Another photo opportunity arises when we pass under the 18-mile-long parallel bridges that carry Interstate 10 over the swamp. Completed in 1973, they are among the longest bridges in the world. Some 55,000 cars cross every day and it’s quite a sight to view the bridges from below as they give the illusion of continuing forever.
We’ve had the wind behind us all the way but now it’s time to head back to our starting point. “I’m going to turn the air-conditioner on for you all,” quips Skip as he turns the boat around.
We’ve loved every minute of the ride, and this larger-than-life character knows we’re not ready to say goodbye. “Y’all want to go again?” he asks as we step ashore.
If you go:
McGee’s Swamp & Airboat Tours
1337 Henderson Levee Road,
Henderson LA 70517
Tel: 337 228 2384
www.mcgeesswamptours.com
Photo credits: © Christine Salins and Maurie O’Connor.
Lafayette Travel hosted our visit to Atchafalaya Basin.
www.lafayettetravel.com
Christine and Maurie blog at www.foodwinetravel.com.au
