30 DAYS OF FREE – NEW ORLEANS: Day Twenty

Activity: Jean Lafitte National Park

Difficulty Rating: Gator

This is seriously my favourite place in New Orleans and I have to resist turning this whole blog into a photo montage. American Husband’s Ohio friends were in town which was the perfect excuse to go there again. Every time we go it gets better and better! In town there are lots of flyers for fancy swamp tours in airboats or paddle boats, but they’re really expensive and packed full of loud tourists. If you’re smart and like to walk the national park is right next to the commercial tours and totally free. Plus you’ll see more critters because you’re not surrounded by smelly, noisy humans.

American Husband asking for a free nose job.

On this fine adventure we got to the park around 1pm and immediately saw our first gator. He was a little guy sunning himself by the path and it looked like he’d lost his hand in a turf war or a bizarro Captain Hook altercation. Further up the path we saw spiders and lizards and a little turtle and a little snake and just when we were wondering how things could get any more awesome we saw a lovely doe grazing between the trees. I don’t know what a doe was doing in a swamp, but she might’ve been wondering the same of us.

In this story, Bambi is a lizard.

The great thing about the Jean Lafitte park (irritatingly pronounced as literally ‘jean’ by locals) is that the walking track takes you through some gorgeous, thickly wooded swamp, then out through grassy marshes to the natural canals and forest bayous. You get to see lots of different terrains as well as creatures. Plus there’s fun information plaques here and there telling you about the nature and human settlers through history. I learned that Jean Lafitte himself was a shady smuggler with a checkered past who put aside his grumpiness and used his ship to help win the revolutionary war. So yeah, this park is dedicated to Han Solo.

Rollin on the river.

But the best part was right at the end of the trail. There’s a big lookout that stretches across the canal and you can gaze out for miles across the grassland. In the distance we saw the familiar swirl of a swimming gator. He was lazily scooting along but so far off that we just waved at him and looked out at other things. Then, after a few minutes, we saw he’d swum all the way down the canal and stopped right under the look out, like he’d come out to greet us! Maybe he wanted a tasty tourist snack. Anyway, he was huge! At least three meters long with a big smiley face full of teeth. It was awesome and a bit scary to see a real giant gator in nature. It feels like cheating when you see one in the zoo, and it’s not so special on a crowded tour. There was nothing to stop us swimming in after him except respect and fear. Anyway, this is my top pick of best free thing to do in New Orleans.

Here’s a picture of the big guy!

“Come on in! The water’s fine.”