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Captain Cyrus Blanchard is a knowlegable, opinionated fellow who took about 60 of us in his catamaran boat for a tour of the wetlands around Lafitte.

On the bayou

It was through him that I learned the difference between a swamp and a bayou. "Most people think a swamp and a bayou are the same thing," he said. (I did.) "They aren't. A swamp is a swamp, and a bayou is a natural waterway through the swamp."

Cajun communities were established when the French were kicked out of Acadia -- what we now call Nova Scotia -- in the late 1700s. The king of Spain generously donated swampland that he owned (but felt was unusable) to these suddenly stateless Acadians. The technology in those days was not sufficient to build roads through the swamps so the bayous, like the canals of Venice, became the "streets and boulevards" of the region. The Acadian communities flourished, using the resources at hand. They became shrimpers, crabbers, and managed to use the small parcels of dry land that they found to grow vegetables and raise hogs. Enterprising Cajuns harvested the Spanish moss from the trees in the swamps, processing it for sale as pillow and furniture stuffing. The Volkswagen company even today uses processed Spanish moss from this region as insulation for the doors of its automobiles.