Leaving Lake
Charles we followed “The Cajun Corridor” east, towards New Orleans. Everything
is very wet – the farmlands are swampy and they are interspersed with real
swamp – acres of Bald Cypress trees growing in stagnant water, with bayous
cutting swathes through the thickly tangled forest. Moss hangs from the
branches, and the swamps are abundant with birdlife.
We stopped
in Abbeville to visit Dupuys, a “Relaxed restaurant & bar serving seafood,
steak, po' boys, pasta & more since 1869”. Our Lonely Planet guide
told us that they serve the best oysters in Louisiana, and we were not
disappointed. Steve had an Alligator Platter – alligator crumbed and fried with
cajun dipping sauce, and found it to be a bit like squid, but so spiced that he
couldn’t tell what it actually tasted like. He liked it. Ros wouldn’t try it.
We took a
side trip to Avery Island to visit the Tabasco factory. Avery Island isn’t a
real island, but a big salt rock dome. Its called and island because it sticks
up out of the swamp land. The native population had long been boiling the briny
spring water to extract salt, but in 1818 it was purchased and began life as a
sugar cane farm. In 1861 salt mining commenced on the island, and oil was
subsequently discovered as well.
In 1868,
Edmund McIlhenny invented the Tabasco sauce recipe to liven up the rather bland
food of the area. He started making batches for friends as well, and it grew
into a business. We did the self guided factory and site tour, which was really
worth while.
The sauce is
made by first mashing up the Tabasco peppers and lightly salting the mash. It
is then pumped into wooden casks, topped with a thick layer of salt and left
for 3 years to mature. After 3 years, the mash is mixed with vinegar in
stainless steel tanks and left for 2-3 weeks, stirred occasionally. Finally
the seeds and pulp are strained off and its bottled on site. The tour took us from the greenhouses, to the
cask making, storing facility, mixers and on to the bottling line. The bottling
plant wasn’t going, but a whiteboard said that 9800 bottles had been packed
today and shipped to Germany.
Leaving
Avery Island and continuing east, the swamp got thicker and deeper and the
highway was running along a long bridge for miles. We saw a paddle steamer on
the river at Amelia. Finally into Houma for the night. The RV park is actually
a trailer park, so its pretty run down and we are keeping to ourselves tonight! Is that the sound of duelling banjos I hear
in the background????
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