CREOLE CULTURE

27-29 May 2013: Days  13-15 of 43 – New Orleans LOUISIANA.

Overnight in New Orleans LOUISIANA.

Today 290km, Total 5,572km. 

Ask any local sitting around Jackson Square, the beating heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans, what a “Creole” is and you will probably get a slightly different answer from each one. According to the Louisiana Legislature, a “Creole” is anyone born in the state before 1800 when a mixture of Black Americans, Black Africans, French, Spanish and even Germans dominated the landscape and inter-married and inter-bred. A more popular definition is anyone of mixed European and Local Black descent.

The term is now used for anyone who lives and breathes the slow-paced, musical and spicy food of Louisiana life. The term “Cajun” is similar but reserved for people of Arcadia in Nova Scotia who moved to this area and also inter-married and bred.  Our introduction to the French Quarter was in a horse and carriage, a popular way to see the small 2 by 5km heart of New Orleans and get the history of the key dwellings in the area. New Orleans was founded by French trader Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville in 1718 and quickly grew with the influx of thousands of African slaves to tend the fields of “white gold” (aka Sugar Cane and Cotton in the North).

The French Quarter suffered two catastrophic fires, one in 1788 and the other in 1794 and was re-built by the Spanish copying the original French style of most houses having their rears to the street with a hidden off-street courtyard for peace and privacy. The only remaining original structure built by the French is the Old Ursuline Convent still in use by Catholic nuns today. The Spanish governed from 1762 to 1799 and once Napoleon escaped exile the French sold Louisiana back to the Union in 1803. The population of New Orleans is currently 344,000, way down since Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city in 2005.

Even though 75% of the city has been rebuilt since then and there are 15% more restaurants than before,  locals tell us that many residents have not returned and tourism is still not what it used to be. After our trotting introduction we relaxed over local coffee which is very bitter and then made our way down to the Canal Street port to board our paddle steamer “Creole Queen” for a 2.5hr cruise down the Mississippi to a place called Chalmette where the Battle of New Orleans took place in 1815, effectively securing the whole USA from the English.

Many say this was the USA’s most important victory. General Andrew Jackson led a Union Army of 1,600 against the 5,000 strong British troops under Colonel Pekingham. It was England’s last ditch attempt to reclaim the USA by taking its number one port – at the time the Mississippi was the life-blood of the Union, delivering food and fuel to the entire country. Control the Port of New Orleans and you control the river and with it the Union! It was a battle that England should have one but thanks to the local knowledge of Jackson who drove the English into the marshlands of the Bayou and exhausted them under the hot and steamy Louisiana sun, it was over in just 20 minutes! 

Most modern-day Creole’s are very proud of this battle and shudder to think what their town and even country would be called if the English had won. We were all allowed to disembark and walk through the battlefield and Antebellum mansion built there on 1833 to preserve the site. Andrew Jackson went on to become President of the USA and the French Quarter central park is named after him. The term “Bayou”, pronounced “buy-oo” refers to the extensive wetlands and tributaries surrounding at the area where the Mississippi delta completes into the Gulf of Mexico. 

Our return cruise featured sipping Martini’s in the river cool breeze and listening to Jazz, that signature sound of the South that was born in New Orleans by locally born Louis Armstrong who was later financed by Al Capone of Chicago fame to sell his bootleg booze!!! Many locals associate the rise of Jazz to prohibition because of this story! Speaking of Jazz, that night we struck it big thanks to the recommendation of a lovely lady in the tourist centre – we wined and dined in front of live Jazz music done with a touch of the modern at a place called “Maison” on Frenchman Street, an up and coming new section of town, close to the French Quarter that features rising amateurs.

We heard two separate bands and Thelma even bought a CD it was so good. The night before we dined at “Coops” in the French Quarter which introduced us to “Gumbo” (seafood soup) and “Jambalaya” (spicy rice stew). We tried the Crawfish Gumbo and Rabbit and Chorizo Jambalaya – both delicious and filling. This place is recommended by Lonely Planet and the local tour guides. Another strange word is the “Po-Boy”, which is a giant baguette sandwich usually filled with fried Crawfish. Our second full day in New Orleans was dedicated to the dead.

We booked ourselves on a historical tour of the old and famous “St Louis Cemetery #1” opened in 1789. This is a place where the “dead do speak”. Our guide, Mark Faulkner was excellent and very entertaining. He is a guitarist and composer and has a knack for telling a good story. He literally brought the famous residents of #1 to life! The most famous or infamous depending on your belief system is Marie Laveau, the “Voodoo Queen”. It turns out that Voodoo is simply another belief system rather than an occult practice and that her body is not actually in the tomb that everyone has initialled for help and good luck. Other famous residents include: Homer Plessy (a Black Civil Rights activist who refused to sit in the Black section of a segregated bus 60yrs before Rosa Parks), Etienne de Bore (the guy that set up the sugar industry in the South) and Paul Morphy (the first ever Chess Champion of the USA).

After 2hrs we felt we knew something about the city and its residents. The afternoon of Tuesday 28 May was a contrast to the historical morning. It was time to meet the “real” residents of New Orleans – the Alligators of the Bayou. Gary, a local “giant of a man” took us out in his tiny launch into river ways and marshland that not even a GPS could get you out of. He has been hunting “gators” since he was 10 and we believed it. Every time one swum up to the boat to chomp on marshmallows that he threw overboard he tried to grab them from the tale. Sadly, two packs of mellows later and no gator!

This guy was as Creole as they come. Big, red, crusty, severe accent and puncture marks up and down his arm. We must have seen 12+ gators. Gary is licensed to kill! Gators that is. He typically kills around 30 every year and sells every part of them for between $300-500USD. That is how he makes his living. A real Creole Dundee. He even mentioned that his dream is to travel to Australia “to get me a crock”! Another Creole Character of note! That night it was an obligatory visit to Bourbon Street, the most touristy in the Quarter. We sat atop a balcony sipping wine and chomping on ribs and beef to the sounds of very amateur street Jazz below.

As the sun set below the French style rooftops I thought to myself – this happens every bloody night! How do they cope? We had to cope. Day two was not over. After dinner we kicked off our third tour of day two, comprising an historical tour of ghosts, haunts ad Voodoo by night. What a fascinating tour this was. Our guide led the four of us plus another four to buildings around the quarter that had very special stories to tell – some based on historical fact and others on myth and legend. We heard about a mad pharmacist who became the first serial killer of the Bayou (we visited his pharmacy at night – he buried the dead in his shop walls!!!) and sadly a chorus of children who died in a theatre fire.

Fascinating tales in a visually tantalising backdrop of old French styled buildings bathed in the street lamp lights of evening. Suffice to say we hot the sack buggered but totally delighted in what we had experienced that day. Our final day in New Orleans was a free day. In the morning Bubba Gump split off from Thelma Louise so do respective shopping. The former picked up new runners and the later new dresses! Thelma and Louise then dropped Bubba Gump off in the city around 1pm.

The guys watched the IMAX presentation of Katrina whilst the gals watched The Great Gatsby in the burbs. Katrina was filmed through the eyes of a 14 year old girl, a famous 60+ male pianist and a 40+ male guitarist who had formed a band to promote the preservation of the Bayou. Apparently one of the key reasons that Katrina caused so much death (3,000 people) and destruction (80% of home destroyed or badly damaged) is that the Bayou had lost most of its Mangroves and vegetation which ordinarily slows down a hurricane when it hits land. Also the temperature of the moist air over the Gulf that forms and duels hurricanes was 2Deg higher than normal (blamed on Global Warming). It was a film linking environment with hurricane with culture through the eyes of 3 musicians – very well done despite what you may or may not believe. 

Bubba Gump spent the rest of the afternoon interviewing the local characters of French Quarter and sampled fresh boiled Crawfish which is actually Crayfish – these look like tiny lobsters and legend has it that they were full-sized lobsters that walked all the way from Arcadia in Nova Scotia to New Orleans and along the way shrunk in size due to the extremity of the expedition – we ate these at “Bubba Gump Restaurants” a chain in New Orleans. Once Thelma and Louise picked us up after enduring a downpour to get to us we were all off to Frenchman Street again to enjoy our first lamb dish in the USA. A full rack of lamb with none cutlets, rare to perfection – at Adolfo’s. Lamb dishes are scarce in the USA and the big supermarkets have little or no lamb – why?  Our Creole experience was complete.

“HOUSTON, WE HAVE A DAG DANCER UP HERE”

26 May 2013: Day 12 of 43 – Houston TEXAS.
Overnight in New Orleans LOUISIANA (State 6).
Today 687km, Total 5,282km. 

We arrived in Houston at around 4:30pm on 25 May 2013 and by 7:30pm we were all sitting in a hug two storey Vietnamese restaurant only 3km form the centre of Houston CBD. Houston is the fourth biggest city in the USA with 8 million. Many of these are Spanish, Czech and Vietnamese. Houston is also well known for its many museums, churches and non-American foodie restaurants. He food we had was great but more towards Chinese style with thicker, richer sauces than the equivalent in Australia. It was great to see the sun the next day with huge puffy clouds that is typical of the Gulf area. By 8am we were cruising around top-down in the centre of Houston CBD admiring the many glass towers, large city blocks, extremely long straight roads and a great tram line down the middle. Downtown Houston is very squish and clean and the CBD is surrounded by a large medical and university precinct that is also highly manicured. This is no oil city. It was obvious by the many museums and churches that there was more going on here. On our way to Space Center, 33km away we drove through some suburbs of Houston to get an idea of broader metro area. The area we chose had a mix of nice stand-alone, big-block houses but most were smaller un-kept cladded houses with some apartments that looked like commission homes. We concluded that it must have been a nice area a long time ago that turned bad.

The “Space Center Houston”, also known as the “Johnson Space Center” after Lyndon B is a sprawling complex half-way between CBD Houston and the Gulf of Mexico. This is “Mission Control” or the place that tracks and manages all in-flight missions from the start of the Space Program to now. 

There are no launches here – these are all at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida, about 60km west of Orlando on the Atlantic Coast. Reason for this being better weather and for safety since an explosion could damage mission control and risk anyone or anything already in space. The set up at Space Center Houston is terrific. There is a huge museum that is more like a Disney Theme Park for adults and children and you get on a tram that takes you out to the real centre to see the old Mission Control (used in all missions up to 1995, especially Apollo) and  huge hanger housing a real Saturn V rocket used as a prototype.

The old Mission Control is just as you see it in the Ron Howard movie “Apollo 13” starring Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell – apparently many shots where here in the real center. All of us were awe-struck. In front of us was the actual room that landed 12 men on the surface of the moon and returned three that almost perished. We saw footage of the real Gene Kranz (Apollo Flight Director – played by Ed Harris in the Apollo 13 movie) and marvelled at all the original 1950’s and 1960’s electronic equipment. It even smelt old and scholarly! This Mission Control was declared a National US Monument in 1995 and a new control room established in the same building “45 North” to manage the Space Shuttle and International Space Center missions, the later still happening today.

A short tram ride away was the colossal hanger housing a horizontally laid “Saturn V” rocket used in all Apollo missions. Each stage of the rocket is separated so you can see in the tops and bottoms of each. The Command Module (45 tons, that accommodated the astronauts) displayed was the actual one used and recovered in the last moon Landing of Apollo 17. The most impressive part are the five main engines in the first stage (hence the V or 5 in the name) that are responsible for lifting this 2,000 ton rocket, 41 miles (66km) straight up (space starts at 100km) to a speed of 10,000km/h!!! It does this by producing a total of 7 million pounds thrust – a fully laden 747-400 (356 tons) uses 240,000 pounds thrust to take off… 

Another 2 stages are required to get the astronauts free of the earth’s pull and travelling to the moon at 35,000km/h. Amazing feat for 1969! Back at the Disney Museum I was fortunate to see several actual moon rocks and even touch one – only 8 moon rocks around the world can be touched and have been carbon dated to 3.5 billion years old. You will have to wait for the film to see this highlight. We all then met at a special theatrette to experience that actual noise and rumble of a Space Shuttle launch – you can feel your rib cage and belly vibrate – fabulous. Then it was another 25min to get the latest updates on the current “Curiosity” Mars Mission, a big 1 ton remote control vehicle which has been on Mars since the start of 2011. Just recently it discovered shale and drilled and analysed some Marsian rock which both prove that water once flowed on Mars. This is the first of the two principle objectives achieved. The second is to explore for chemical evidence of the ingredients required to sustain micro-biotic life on the red planet. They are funded for a further two years to achieve this. By 1pm we said farewell y'all to this amazing center and Texas bound for New Orleans some 5.5hrs drive away.

THE CAPITAL OF TEJAS

25 May 2013: Day  11 of 43 – Austin TEXAS.
Overnight in Houston TEXAS.
Today 315km, Total 4,595km. 

It was pouring when we arrived into the capital of Texas, Austin at around 4pm on 24 May 2013. Lucky for us that the storm caught us about 5 miles from our hotel. Since it continued to rain and our rooms where more like mini-apartments complete with kitchen, dishwasher, microwave and stove and the was a massive Wal-Mart just up the road, we all decided to have a home cooked dinner that night. After shopping we managed to get slightly lost for the first time but eventually made it back to the hotel to cook up our own storm. It was delicious – Olives stuffed with Jalapeno, Chilli Chicken, Chilli Porterhouse, Avocado Salad, Steamed Vegies and a huge tub of strawberries to finish it all off. Naturally plenty of wine to help us sleep better. The next morning it was grey and sprinkling so we headed for the Bob Bullock Texas Museum that I had read about. This museum is terrific and huge. It is downtown and  consists of three levels of interactive display that lay out the complete history of Texas and of course Austin. Bob Bullock was Lieutenant Governor of Texas from 1990-1999 and was responsible for funding and building the museum so that future generations of Texan children could learn about the history of Texas. Back in 1528, the Spanish claimed Texas along with all of Mexico and called it “Tejas”. Spain and France consistently fought over Tejas until 1821 when Mexico won its independence from Spain and made Tejas a state of Mexico.

By this time Tejas was populated mainly by Mexicans but ironically had problems with “illegal immigrants” coming in from other US states. From 1835 there was a revolution in Frejas and it won its independence in only 18min on 21 April 1836 at the famous battle at San Jacinto where General Sam Houston defeated Mexican forces after they destroyed the 13 day siege of the Alamo just a month earlier. Stephen F Austin (former citizen of Mexico) was instrumental in lobbying for independence. Sam Houston became the first President of the renamed independent “Republic of Texas” and the capital named Austin to honour Stephen – a country in its own right – up until December 1845 when most citizens agreed to join the union to become the 28^th state of the USA.

This decision was largely driven by poverty and debt – Texas need money to rebuild and the American Civil War made things worse. After the Civil War the Texan population and economy exploded with the discovery of oil and the first oil well in Spindletop in 1901. Texas was also the main supplier of wheat, cotton and rice to the Union during and after the Civil War since although hot and dry, Texas has 23 massive underground freshwater lakes called “aquifiers” which enabled agriculture and the cattle industry to thrive. The first Texas cowboys appeared as Spanish Missionaries in 1730 and the first cattle drives started in 1866. 

This excellent and highly informative museum is very close to the Capitol Building, built in 1888 of pink granite and the largest of all state capital buildings. We drove around it as it was still sprinkling outside and ended up at the Whole Foods Market. This is a huge supermarket surrounded by extensive food stalls that sell only organic produce and products from wine to chocolate coated crisps. Austin is very big on organic food and is also now considered the new Gay Capital of America.

Austin is also popular for hard rock bars and pubs with two huge annual concerts. Bubba discovered a late night show as I was blogging that was interviewing an Energy Expert who said: the USA has immense gas and oil reserves still underground. If the greenies do not interfere there is at least 150 years worth of gas and in 10 years the USA will NOT have to import ANY oil!!! Amazing. So much for the "urgent" need for clean energy.
In the early afternoon we set out on our 3.5hr drive to Houston. By this time the clouds had lifted and some blue was showing but it was still a moist 32C outside.