Canoeing Louisiana – Armadillos and more Alligators

After spending time in both Austin and Houston we were ready for some time away from cities. We crossed the border from Texas to Louisiana and instantly felt the difference. Travelling around from state to state, we’ve been given the opportunity to really notice the widespread differences between the states – it’s difficult to understand how such different cultures can be united as one country. However, we are looking forward to exploring the central and Maritime regions of Canada as well, to see if the same holds true in Canada.

We thought we’d drive through Louisiana in a day or so, stop at New Orleans along the way and maybe eat some gumbo… we’ve been here a week so far and haven’t even been to New Orleans yet! We started our stay here at a state park with miles of cypress tree swamps, covered with Spanish moss, filled with lilypads and bright green algae, teeming with birds and wildlife, including our new favourite, the alligator. We rented canoes for a day of paddling about and were rewarded with some of the most beautiful scenery yet on our trip. Not what I would have expected from a swamp!




As well as all the birds, we viewed one nice fat alligator sunning himself on a log (from a safe distance!) and a nutria, an animal we’d never heard of before. The nutria is very similar in appearance to a muskrat, kind of like a small beaver but with a rat-like tail. Nutrias are introduced species in Louisiana and so are generally reviled as pests. The government has developed a hunting season as well as a host of recipes to entice people to come on out and catch nutrias for food but the program has not been too successful. If you know what a muskrat looks like you’ll have an appreciation for why they aren’t exactly an appetizing looking creature…



Our canoeing adventure was so fun that we decided to repeat it at a park further south, in an area called the Atchafalaya Basin, a hugely important wetland area. Our canoeing skills were starting to improve by day two, the first day we went out had seen several tree-canoe head-on collisions (thankfully our speed was low) as well as a few unfortunate incidents with bank side shrubbery. Capsizing into a murky swamp that does in fact have a very healthy population of alligators was not appealing so we were glad to be canoeing smoothly. In the Atchafalaya we were lucky enough to see not one but about five baby alligators! They were sunning themselves on logs, minding their own business. Except for some phaffing about with our camera for the first group, we tried also to mind our own business and let them be, as if a boat glides too close, they would slip down and into the water. We met a wonderful and knowledgeable park ranger who explained a lot to us about the wetland environment, including that alligators are much less aggressive than people might think (they are apparently significantly less aggressive than crocodiles for example), and that they generally try their best to steer clear of humans.





In keeping with the “A” letter animals, we also had our first sighting with an armadillo at our campsite – Megan heard something rustling about at night next to our van and went to check it out. All she saw was a brown creature with a long tail and it’s head stuck in a hole in the ground. In the dark it looked like the hugest rat ever seen!! Eww. So she got the high-powered headlamp to check it out and found it had strange patterns. Dave got out to take a look and it lifted its head. An armadillo! Apparently armadillos eat worms and so spend their evening digging around all over looking for dinner. They have very poor eyesight so wasn’t bothered by the bright light we shone on it. The next day we saw about 10 armadillos, scuttling about the bushes.