Cancun, New Orleans

Our second tour was with Crescent Tours to Laura Plantation, about one hour's drive outside of New Orleans. Doug had visited years ago and bought a book by the same name. The author, Laura Gore Lacoul had written her recollections of growing up on the plantation so the history would not be lost to her grandchildren.

We shared a quick breakfast at the diner Ruby Slipper, a chain and service was friendly and efficient. We arrived at the appointed pick up spot at 8 am to wait 30 minutes for our driver, a retransplant to the Mississipi from California where she had worked as a bus driver. She pointed out various landmarks along the way including an impressive city hospital abandoned since Hurricaine Katrina distroyed it in 2005 and it stood like a large empty ghost building. She asked whether we had seen the new Netflix movie on Katrina and pointed out the overpasses where people waited for two days to be rescued. Similar to our companions at lunch yesterday, there is an ongoing question about the priority of the officials who both neglected the levy that broken and the ones that decided to break another to save the French Quarter at the expense of an economically poorer area. Although some 1500 people were recorded as perished in the disaster, many remain unaccounted for including 10 in our driver's family. We passed sugar cane fields. Sugar can is a spiky plant that grows up to 18 inches tall. The USA is the world's fifth producer. Cotton will not grow here due to the wet soil so all plantations were based on the sugar cane industry.

Our guide was a young woman who presented the history in a leisurely and comprehensive manner including commentary on the slave trade and abuses of the black population both before and after the Civil War.

We then drove about 20 minutes to Oak Alley Plantation along River Road where there are many plantations. This one is the classic antebellum (pre Civil war) white Roman-Grecian pillar design and is known for the row of oaks lining the boulevard to the main entrance.

Laura's grandparents had purchased the 400 acres and run it as a sugar plantation.Read more