A Chaotic Family Swamp Tour

From our bus driver, Pebbles, trolling us with a George Michael song to my 1-year-old cousin's epic meltdown on the bayou, here's how this classic tourist activity went for me and a dozen relatives.

Despite having grown up in the South Louisiana bayou–or perhaps because of it–I’ve never actually been on a swamp tour. It always seemed like a thing tourists did, and I figured I’d get around to it sooner than later while hosting friends from out of town who wanted to see some gators in the wild. But somehow, at 40 years old, I just experienced my first proper swamp tour this weekend.

My mom’s whole side of the family was meeting in New Orleans to celebrate our late grandmother, who passed away in November and expressly did not want a funeral. Granny had asked to be cremated (with a handwritten note for the cremator that said “Please make sure I’m dead first”), to have her ashes displayed in a purple Crown Royal bag, and for the family to throw a big party where we all drank excessively and shared funny stories about her.  

That party was scheduled for Saturday, but my relatives and I were all flying in on the Thursday night before–so my mom decided to book us all on a swamp tour for Friday morning. So my aunt and uncle from Alaska, my brother and his 3-year-old, my Brooklyn cousins and their 1-year-old, and other cousins from Philly and Virginia all found ourselves motoring through the deep bayou together on a hot Louisiana morning. Here’s the chaotic story of how that went down, for anyone who may be considering doing something like this with a large crew that includes babies. 

6:45 am: We wake up to our phone alarms, having been told we have to meet at the corner of Tchoupitoulas and Julia Sts. no later than 7:50 am or we’ll miss the bus to the swamp. It’s pouring rain outside, despite there being no evidence of rain anywhere near us on the forecast.  

8:15 am: My 12 relatives and I have been huddled in the rain for 25 minutes. It’s 90 degrees outside, the toddlers and Alaska natives are restless and uncomfortable standing in what feels like a giant pot of steam, our deodorant is already wearing off, and the bus has not arrived yet. 

8:45 am: Our bus driver, a man named Pebbles, has been giving us a guided tour of the interstate via the loudspeaker that absolutely no one asked for. Ten minutes into the half-hour drive to Slidell, Pebbles starts doing crowd work with a family from California. My cousin Briar and I discuss jumping out a window.

9 am: Pebbles is now fully trolling us by playing George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” as an example of New Orleans-inspired jazz.

9:45 am: We arrive at Honey Island Swamp, which is gorgeous and magical in a distinctly Louisiana kind of way, and board a long motorboat called GATORBAIT X. I’m pleasantly surprised to hear that the mosquitos don’t come out til dusk on the bayou, so our lack of bug spray is not the catastrophe I feared. 

10 am: Our tour guide, John, has an encyclopedic knowledge of the swamp and every plant and animal in it. Alligators are swimming up alongside the boat as he chucks protein pellets into the water for them, and he teaches us how to estimate a gator’s length in feet just by counting the inches from its nostrils to its eyes.

10:15 am: John has parked the boat next to a tree to talk to us about deadly spiders and bees. It’s suddenly raining on us again, and my cousins’ 16-month-old baby, Etta, is screaming bloody murder. Ever the professional tour guide, John is ignoring Etta’s meltdown to continue a lesson about the necrotic venom of Brown Recluse spiders in this very bayou that once killed off a chunk of his nose.

10:30 am: “See something, say something,” John says. I think he is referring to terrorism, but he means like a random little weird owl in a tree that he might be able to identify for us.

10:45 am: We’re motoring past the over-water shacks inhabited by “swamp people,” who John says live off the grid and don’t pay taxes. One of them has a boat docked outside with a Trump 2024 flag that says “The Rules Have Changed.” We see a pair of crawfish farmers pulling their haul out of the water, and they shout “five dollars a pound” to us as we pass. One swamp house has a full tree sprouting through the roof.

11 am: John points out all the iconic Spanish moss dripping from the trees in the bayou and tells us the Native Americans named it after the long grey beards of the Spanish settlers who colonized Louisiana. My 10-year-old cousin Caspian is munching on alligator jerky he’d bought in the gift shop.

11:15 am: We pull into a little secret cove where a family of adorable raccoons excitedly greet John as if he’s raised them himself. They come right up to the boat to say hello, one perched on a log and another clinging to a tree trunk. John seems genuinely thrilled to see them. 

11:30: The tour ends, and we climb back onto the dock. It is no longer raining, and Etta is no longer screaming. Pebbles waits for us on the bus to take us back to New Orleans, and thankfully, he has much less to say on the drive back. 

All in all, I highly recommend a swamp tour (the company we booked through is called Cajun Encounters), with a few caveats: Go before the weather is too hot and sticky. Do not bring babies under 3 years old. Prepare for it to be a five-hour affair that is at times physically and mentally taxing. Bring iced coffee and earplugs on the bus. Do not get drunk the night before. Bring some kind of poncho, because it will rain even if it says it won’t. Bring cash for tips.

Here to answer any further questions, y’all!