Advertisement
Published: December 25th 2005
Edit Blog Post
Alligator Alley
The Airboat ride Started off the day by going to the gym again this morning… Then to Denny’s to try and get breakfast which was a mission and a half!!
We crossed into the state of Mississippi, where the capital is Jackson and the population is about 200,000.
There have been a lot of problems here over the years, especially in the 1950’s/60’s. You see the main economy was agriculture and therefore was heavily reliant on the slave trade. Hundreds of years ago Americans from the south used to take a boat to Africa and capture slaves to bring them back to the south and sell them off. As America gained more land and moved west there were designated “Slave States” and “Non Slave States”. When Abraham Lincoln was elected as President he put a stop to slavery. The southern states wanted to keep slavery as they needed them to work in their agricultural ventures, so they broke away and formed a confederacy. A civil war followed as a result but the south lost so that put an end to slavery for good… but unfortunately not to racism…
The KKK formed in Tennessee after the Civil War, made up of white
Alligator
They were smaller than I thought... Protestants, against the blacks, Catholics etc…
There were some high profile cases of violence during their worst years including one about a 14yro boy who was visiting from the north, where they didn’t have the slavery and segregation. The story was told to me something like this… he was talking to some boys saying he’d dated a white girl, the southern boys couldn’t believe it since they couldn’t even share a water fountain, nor buses or schools. So the other boys dared him to go up to a white girl and show them that he wasn’t scared. The young man did a cat call to a white girl that was passing by and her brother found out about this so later that night he and his friends went to where the black boy was staying with his uncle and abducted him. They pistol whipped him within an inch of his life, then they strapped an old fan to his body with barb wire and threw him into the river. When they recovered the body he was unrecognisable. His mum came to get his body and took it back to Chicago where she had an open casket to show the
world what segregation had done to her boy… Such a sad story and I’m sure that there were many more just like it…
We crossed into Louisiana, which has Kentwood in it, the house of Britney Spears.
We crossed a massive lake which we all mistook for the ocean. The bridge that crossed it was 27 miles long.
We made it to New Orleans which we were all pretty excited about. The first thing you notice is the above ground crypts - they can’t bury their dead below ground as New Orleans is built on a swamp. The crypts were featured in the movie Double Jeopardy.
Most of the names in the town are French inspired. We did a quick city tour and were shown the ‘French Quarter” which we were advised not to stray to far from for our own safety.
We dropped our stuff at our hotel Pry train and then took a trip to “Alligator Alley’ for our airboat ride. One of the tour guides was pretty cute and I’m not sure most of the girls were taking any notice of the alligators! His accent was different due to the French prevalence
in this city. I got to hold a baby alligator about 2 feet long. We saw a few alligators and learnt that each inch between their eye and jaw signifies roughly 1 foot in length. Alligators live between 80-100 years old. We also learnt that they like to eat marshmallows. The airboat was cool and they get it fully cranking and spin it in complete circles for fun!!
We got changed and headed to ‘Bubba Gump’s’ for dinner. There were all types of shrimp dishes as you would image. The food wasn't great though! I tried one of the New Orleans signature drinks - Hurricane, which was nice. For dinner I ordered the ‘Bucket of boat trash’ and I’m afraid it was exactly that and I can’t believe I ordered something called that!!! I felt sick after it!!
We then went out to a club afterwards all dressed in our pimps and hoes outfits (which we’d put together during our visits to Walmart over the previous few days!!) and boy were we getting some strange looks!! To give you a visual, Nat and I dressed as twins in our pink train drivers hat, 60’s style top and lime
green skirt and pink fishnets… I think we ended up going for more bad taste then hoes I think!! My ex husband broke my sandals when we were walking along so I had to buy some smashing pink thongs!! These hurt too much so I ended up in some clear plastic shoes that had flashing lights on them! Very attractive… Some of the boys on our bus went as hoes, so that was pretty funny! Especially Drew, who with his net shirt with no bra and red AC/DC mini and knee high black fishnets looked um…. Very pretty!!! The other boys looked very good with all their bling!! We were some site in Bourbon Street
The famous Bourbon Street is pretty hard to believe and you wouldn’t believe it unless you were there… It’s an eye opener and I’m not sure I could describe it even if I tried but for you all I will give it a go!! It smells terrible... a cross between sewer and spew. There are endless bars and clubs playing everything from Jazz to retro, and there are strip type clubs, which I liken to Pat Pong in Thailand and souvenir shops everywhere. The
men stand on the balconies along the street and try to temp the ladies to show their boobs for beads!!! (and some really do!!) and the girls yell out to the guys to try and get the boys to drop their pants - however you can get arrested for doing this!! Dad, you’ll be pleased to know I didn't get any beads!!!
Like most places in the US though, they seem to barricade off the busiest streets so you can walk around freely…. You are allowed to drink in the streets here also. It really is a party town.
I tried the signature drink called ‘Hand Grenade’ which wasn’t too bad!! Except it was green!!!
I decided that since it was already after 1am that I catch a cab ‘home with Stu, Rachel, Meg and Anna. Our cab driver was cool, said his name was ‘Buddy Love’ and I asked him if he was out of the Nutty Professor (Eddy Murphy’s movie) but he says not! He told us a whole heap of stuff we should do and where to go and said they were happy to have us here!!
Went to our room which had
a loft above a tight spiral set of stairs which ended up being my room. We had the air con on but it was sooo hot and I couldn’t sleep. Was still awake at 4.30am when my roommate got home.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.286s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 14; qc: 74; dbt: 0.0744s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
mshorrock
Matt Shorrock
Pensacola, Fl
Hey Lis! I was talking to a guy from Pensacola Florida when I was in Jamaica last week. Are they ALL like Forrest Gump there? He was like "I play foot-ball...and I like to hurt people!". He also could not believe that New Zealand was a seperate country and not just a part of Australia! Sounds like you are having fun!...I hate to say I told you so, but...