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Every swamp worth its salt has a monster. Honey Island’s is the real headliner, the one that made it onto national TV, the closest thing Louisiana has to Bigfoot. And here’s the honest part I’ll tell you up front, before you paddle a single stroke: nobody has ever proven it exists. That doesn’t make the…

You have probably crossed it. Most people have. If you have ever driven Interstate 55 north out of New Orleans toward Jackson, you spent a good ten minutes up on a narrow concrete bridge with swamp on both sides, cypress trees standing in black water as far as you could see, and you almost certainly…

People ask me this one on the water almost every trip. Someone points at a gator sunning on a log and says, wait, is that an alligator or a crocodile? Fair question. The two animals get mixed up constantly, they show up in the same cartoons, and half the internet uses the words like they…

The short answer: alligators, a lot of birds, turtles, snakes, and a big invasive rodent called the nutria. The Louisiana swamp is one of the densest wildlife habitats in the country, and from a kayak you are close enough to actually see it. Here is what lives out here and what you are realistically going…

Spring is the best time of year to visit New Orleans, and the smartest way to start a spring trip is on the water before the city pulls you in every other direction. The weather lands in that short, perfect window. Warm enough to be outside all day, not yet the wall of summer humidity….

Picking between a swamp tour and a plantation tour comes down to one question: do you want nature or do you want history? A swamp tour puts you in the middle of alligators, herons, and cypress draped in Spanish moss. A plantation tour walks you through antebellum buildings and the hard history of the people…

People ask me all the time when they can come see a gator. Fair question. The honest answer is that alligators run on a calendar, and it’s a temperature calendar, not a month-on-the-wall one. Once you understand how the year moves for them, you can pretty much predict what the swamp will be doing before…

Here’s the thing nobody tells first-time paddlers: seeing an alligator on a swamp trip is the goal, not the emergency. You came out here to see one. And almost every single time you do, nothing happens at all. The gator clocks you, decides you’re too big and too weird to bother with, and slides off…

You are planning a New Orleans bachelorette and you already know the city will hand you bars, beignets, and a balcony or two. The thing nobody remembers a year later is the fourth bar crawl. What they remember is the morning the whole group paddled into a cypress swamp and somebody spotted an alligator. This…

I get this question in the parking lot before we even reach the water, usually from someone who booked the trip and then spent the night before reading horror stories. Do alligators attack kayaks? It’s a fair thing to be scared of. It’s also, mostly, the wrong thing to be scared of. So here’s the…

Wear light, quick-drying clothes you do not mind getting a little wet, and shoes that can get wet too. Add a hat, sunglasses, and sunscreen. That is the whole answer. You are paddling a kayak through a swamp in Louisiana, so the goal is cool, dry-fast, and easy to move in. Leave the nice outfit…

Here’s the question I get more than any other, usually over the phone, usually from someone planning their first trip to Louisiana: should we just rent kayaks and go, or book the guided tour? Fair question. We run both, so I’ve got no reason to push you one way for the money. Let me actually…