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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…

On a still morning out here, the water goes flat enough to hold the whole sky, and it is easy to forget you are floating over anything but mud and cypress roots. You are not. Somewhere under my kayak, and under yours if you come out with us, are the bones of two towns that…

Type “Manchac” into a map and you’ll get two hits about 100 miles apart. Same name, wildly different water. People book a swamp tour, read a Wikipedia paragraph about a colonial fort, and show up expecting a Revolutionary War site. That is the wrong Manchac. Guests ask us to sort this out constantly, so here’s…

The first time a wild gator surfaces a rod’s length off your bow, you go dead silent. Not because you’re scared. Because you don’t want to break it. That six-footer has no clue you’re there, and the only reason is that you came in on a kayak with no engine, no wake, nothing to warn…

Spanish moss is not a moss, and it is not killing the tree. That trips up almost everyone the first time they paddle under it. The grey strands draped over every cypress out here are an air plant, a member of the bromeliad family, which makes Spanish moss a close relative of the pineapple. Same…

Yes, you can kayak the New Orleans swamp in winter, and on a mild day it is one of the most peaceful paddles of the year. South Louisiana winters are gentle compared to most of the country, so a calm, sunny day in the 60s makes for easy, pleasant paddling. The catch is the alligators….

Most people meet the Manchac Swamp through a car window, doing 70 on the I-55 bridge, and never learn they just crossed a graveyard. Two towns are under that water. So is the tail end of an international border, a clear-cut cypress forest, and one of the best wildlife corridors left in southeast Louisiana. This…

Yes, the New Orleans swamp tour is worth it, and a guided kayak tour is the version worth your money. For 65 dollars you get two hours sitting at water level under old cypress, close enough to hear an egret’s wings and watch a gator slide off a log without a motor scaring it away…

Winter is the most underrated time to be in New Orleans. The weather is mild, the summer humidity is gone, and once the holidays pass, the crowds thin out in a way you never see in spring. You can walk into restaurants. You can hear yourself think on Frenchmen Street. And Bourbon Street, frankly, is…