This is all you'll ever get...: Independence Day

I knew about the importance of the fourth of July in America since I was young, entirely due to a Will Smith movie I owned on VHS with the same name as this blog title. In the movie aliens invade earth on Independence Day (July 4), with the movie ending with the sort of fourth of July fireworks you would expect from Hollywood.

My fourth of July experience didn't feature alien motherships blowing up entire cities and being fought by space-jets, but it was a holiday, and it was definitely an experience to remember. My friend Pradip had just moved to a new place and his new roommate Whitney had invited him and a couple of friends (one of which was me!) to stay at his holiday house just out of New Orleans. It turns out the house was part of a really cool little fishing camp situated on a bayou in John Lafitte Preserve, which could only be reached via boat.

The camp in John Lafitte Preserve, just south of New Orleans

It was such a unique experience to stay at this camp. Some of the houses were just holiday houses, but others live there permanently and made their living off the land and bayou. Whitney took us to meet his friends who live, fish, and hunt in the area and introduced themselves as "swamp people" (as in the TV series - VIDEO). They showed us their soft-shelled (blue) crab tanks and we grabbed some which had freshly shed their shells, fried them whole in fish-fry batter, and ate them between two slices of bread with hot sauce. A true Louisiana delicacy apparently!

We packed a lot of fun into the two days we were there. We messed around on the water a lot; cruising around in the boat looking for alligators (we saw a couple), canoeing, kayaking, fishing (no luck), and the most fun of all - being towed behind the boat in an inflatable tube! We also relaxed in the cool of the house to escape the heat, had a BBQ and beers to celebrate fourth of July, and watched fireworks from afar. In all, I couldn't ask for a better first Independence Day. Now, back to doing a bit of hard work instead of travelling - at least until August when we redo our east coast Phragmites field survey!