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.