The air was comfortably warm and slightly humid as we drove straight into New Orleans, Louisiana.
Driving through the streets of old neighborhoods with paint peeled walls, we saw the shiny high rises in the city center looming in the distance. The notorious images of hurricane Katrina, the flooding and the Super-dome nightmare were always in the backs of our minds, as we mixed with the tourists in the French quarter.
The South seems to always be trying to forget its past, and the French quarter, polished and gentrified for the visiting, ends at an invisible line where the money stops and drugs, crime and poverty still thrive.
Old buildings and easy going locals give the commercialized Bourbon street some charm, but the real treat was the garden district; where the rich white live in beautiful pillared villas, high above the flood waters.
We slept that night in a mosquito breeding ground disguised as a campground and then returned to New Orleans to explore the cemeteries, beautiful old neighborhoods and taste the rich meaty southern food. We stumbled across a film shoot and got to watch from behind the camera, as the crew hustled and Jason Statham looked cool in his woolen coat in the now sweltering heat. details here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472399/
The air was warm and sweet, the lifestyle relaxed; if it wasn't for the fact the the lower ninth ward resembled an African shanty town, New orleans might be a lovely place to live. We briefly drove thru the flood damaged boarded up homes that the poor inhabit below sea level, long enough to see how desperately poor and trapped some black Americans are.
