Driving to New Orleans and the city of Austin

One of the unexpected treats that my best friend, Tony Rizarri had in store for me and my daughter Katrina was a visit to the famous City of New Orleans in Louisiana. This was a five and a half-hour 300-mile car ride from Houston. Tony was joking that since I brought my daughter named Katrina to New Orleans, we might not be welcomed. Indeed, almost two years ago New Orleans suffered the worse disaster ever to happen in the United States of America when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf of Mexico.

I wanted to see for myself how New Orleans has recovered two years after the hurricane destroyed it. We stayed at the Maison St. Charles Hotel, an old wooden hotel, not in the flooded areas. According to Tony Rizarri the downtown district has already recovered. Only the homes that were flooded, owned mostly by poor black Americans have not gotten repair. While tourists go and see the homes ruined by Hurricane Katrina, I wasn't interested in seeing them; after all, we get our share of super typhoons back home in the Philippines.

You have to hand it to the people in New Orleans to turn one of the greatest natural (actually, many people do not blame Hurricane Katrina as to Pres. Bush for not fixing the levee as money for it was transferred to the war effort in Iraq) disasters ever to happen in the USA into a major part of their tourism industry. Today their stores carry colored photo documentaries of the disaster in book entitled "Katrina Revisted, The Great Deluge and Hurricane Katrina".

We arrived near midnight and walked over to Canal St. and the famous Bourbon St. in the French Quarter where the nightlife was very much alive with young people because of the Spring Break season. While Bourbon St. was flooded at the height of the Hurricane, it was quickly refurbished. Life now is back to normal. There's lots booze and girls in their bars with signs that advertise "Bottomless and bottoms up…if you're offended by this, you are not required to enter." New Orleans is one very Catholic City in the USA, but in Bourbon St. sex is their religion!

New Orleans is also famous for Cajun or Creole cooking. I ordered a bowl of Gumbo at the Market Café just behind the golden statue of St. Joan d'Arc. It was the best Gumbo I ever tried. I also learned that New Orleans Cajun cuisine has their own lechon, which they call in French Cochon de Lait (koe sohn da lay), Chicharon, which they call "Cracklin". Since its crawfish season, we ate pounds of crawfish.

Downtown New Orleans is a tourist spot, especially around the St. Louis Cathedral (beside the Mississippi River) where you can tour the city in horse-drawn carriages. This is the only place in America where the streets reek of horseshit! It reminded me of how Colon St. in Cebu City used to smell like when Tartanillas roamed our main streets. But to the tourists, the smell and architecture of New Orleans bring them back in time.

New Orleans is like Vigan (only five times bigger) or Carcar where old buildings are not destroyed to make new ones, but are preserved and turned into tourist spots. Most of downtown New Orleans is a tourist area. Police are all over the place. The police make sure that the tourists spend their money without them getting mugged.

The next day we took the same route on the way back to Houston. We were able to see the Atchafalaya Heritage area where the Freeway goes in the middle of the wetlands. This is like the Candaba Viaduct in Pampanga, except it is five times longer and the motorists are surrounded by wildlife. This is the only freeway where I saw an alligator and raccoons run over by motor vehicles.

We stopped by the State Wildlife Management Area information service for brochures about America's largest wetlands. One more thing I learned about the State of Louisiana, all the counties are called Parishes. So when you see a sign that says Iberville Parish, it is not really a Parish in the sense of a Catholic Church Parish… it is a county. This is the only State that calls its counties Parish. Perhaps it is because Louisiana is a very Catholic State.

Next, we took a short two-hour ride to the City of Austin, the State Capital of Texas to see my big bike BMW buddy, Rogie Borromeo, his wife Ditas and kids (Tiffany and Gail). Austin has a State Capitol that is patterned from the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Rogie drove us to his lakeshore house beside the LBJ Lake in Granite Shoals, which he calls the Royal Oak Villa. It is now part of the Texas Vacations as this place is truly a great recreation area.

I also met his neighbor Mr. Mitchell Stephen who showed me his boat and his new scoped .17 cal Marlin Rifle. This is a new caliber rifle, smaller than a .22 cal, but more potent. We only stayed overnight. That was more than enough excuse for me to find time to return to Austin and visit Rogie again. Hopefully, I will be back by tomorrow, after my Globe Stockholders meeting in Manila.