Charleston

Charleston is beautiful! Part of this has to do with a warming in the weather but mostly it is a pretty harbour town with a lot of charm and character. George and Christine gave me a quick spin around the old town with its grand southern homes and cobblestone streets. The place is dripping with war history as it was a strategic port for both or the American Wars and below you can see a Civil War mortar that faces out towards the small island in the middle of the harbour, Fort Sumter.

Lunch was good southern shrimp and grits (which tastes scrumptiously better than it sounds) with oyster and mussel appetisers.

The afternoon was enjoyed at Middleton Plantation (above) which is more about the grounds than the house because one of the Middletons bankrupted himself supporting the confederate army and then Sherman came in and burned his house down anyway (Sherman did a lot of reaping, pillaging, burning and various other mindless destruction in the south and is not very popular around the traps) and poor old Middleton had no money to rebuild. Later generations have restored the gardens, however, which are extensive and very well manicured. Unfortunately most of the blooms are not yet out so I did not get to see it at it's peak however I feel that spring is definitely on its way!There is much of Charleston that needs closer scrutiny so I plan to return for a few days later in the year.

Congaree NP

Congaree NP is a swamp forest not far from Columbia. There are a series of boardwalks and trails throughout and we went on a guided wander with a ranger who was very informative about the trees in the area. Many Champion Trees (the largest of their species in the state or country) are to be found in Congaree Swamp.

At this time of the year it is quite light as there are no leaves on any of the trees however in the summer it becomes a very dense forest. The trees are all happy to live with their feet in the water as the area is often flooded. It is a very different kind of forest to those found in Australia so rather interesting for me to see.

Columbia SC

I'm now a year closer to old age but all is well. I have arrived in Columbia, South Carolina (in the USA you seem to always have to say the state after the town because there are so many places with the same name) and am staying with some old friends of Mum and Dad. It's is fantastic to have a room of my own and great home cooked food !

Yesterday George and I did a tour of the city and had a look and a few local landmarks. 2 rivers meet here so the waters are used for commerce in the form of old cotton mills and current hydro electric plants as well as for recreation with canoeing and kayaking. I'm hoping to go on a little canoe trip but will wait for a warm day to do so.

Over the weeked there are a couple of out-of-town trips planned so I'll keep you posted.

Sunny Atlanta

Well today dawned much friendlier that yesterday. Still cold and windy but I was brave enough to venture out for a bit. I cruised around Centennial Olympic Park and had a chat to Old Mate Pierre here.

Then the wind got the better of me and I sought the shelter of the nearby Acquarium. It is fairly new and very big with a beluga whale exhibit and an Open Ocean tank with, among thousands of other fish and rays, 4 whale sharks. There was also a Tropical section with mostly Indo-Pacific reef critters and a Rivers section with alligators, pirhanas, Amazon snakes and frogs, and bottom-feeding fish which you view from underneath - a nifty angle. As acquariums go it was rather good and not at all crowded.

After New Orleans, Atlanta seems a very organised city and while there's not much touristy stuff here, it's nice to see clean streets and complete buildings around the place.

Snowy Atlanta

Well all round today was not the greatest day of the trip. I took the overnight bus from New Orleans to Atlanta which was chockas, smelly and full of crazy people (that's what Greyhound USA is all about) and then when I arrived in Atlanta there's a snow storm. I can feel a winter flu brewing in the recesses of my throat so I stocked up on Vitamin C, throat soothers and Chicken noodle soup, wrapped myself in a warm blanket with an Agatha Christie novel and whiled away the day listening to the howling wind. My weathergirl Chris in South Carolina promises this is the last of the serious winter storms! Hope she's right.

Plantations

Oak Alley Plantation

Laura Plantation

New Orleans

I have been a bit slow with the blog lately but that is because I have slowed down the pace of my trip, to conserve funds and to spend some time just hanging out with people.

I have been in New Orleans for a week and it is rather a difficult city to describe because it is full of contradictions. Parts of the city are beautiful with very strong French and Spanish influences in the architecture. There are sections where old money just oozes through pavements and it all runs at a slow, laid back and often seedy and drunken pace. The history of the area is lush and fascinating and the food is divine - although not very good for the waistline.

But then you step out of the old town built on the high ground and the whole area is one of the saddest examples of humanity I have ever come across. It has been 5 years since Katrina but the whole place still looks like a war zone. Almost all of the New Orleanians I have met spend their days talking up their fabulous city (as much to convince themselves as anyone else) and their nights behaving debaucherously and bemoaning the lack of government funding to rebuild the city (perhaps justifyibly so). There are some rebuilding projects but obviously not nearly enough. Rather stupidly, as far as I can see, the levee that collapsed and caused most of the major damage has been rebuilt to exactly the same strength (or lack there of) as before the hurricane. It is a skinny concrete wall holding back a very big canal. I also did a little research and the estimated damage cost from the storm and flooding was around $100 billion - Yes that is a large sum of money - but bear in mind the USA military budget for 2009 alone was between $800 billion and $1 trillion. Priorities?

Anyway that's enough of Morwenna' s State of the Union proselytism. I spent much of my week wandering the streets of the French Quarter and enjoying the various street performances and bands that are everywhere. I have also been enjoying creole cuisine especially gumbo - mostly because it has a cool name - and lots of fried chicken, fried shrimp and fried green tomatoes.

I spent a day wandering the cemeteries. The tombs are all above ground as the water table is so close to the surface and as creepy as it sounds, the cemeteries are one of the most scenic things in the city.

I checked out some of the swamp land, which is vast and bleak at this time of year. It is supposedly inhabited by gators but I didn't see any. I visited Lake Pontchartrain, the 2nd largest saltwater lake in the USA (60km by 40km) and travelled along the Mighty Mississippi for a little way. One thing you can say for New Orleans, it is not short of water frontage.

I visited a couple of plantations along the Mississippi. There seems to have been rather a lot of animosity between the Europeans and the Americans which was highlighted by tours of two different plantations. The French plantation was very much a place of business and the tour informative and obviously well researched so that the darker side of the plantation lifestye (slavery among other things) was not swept under the carpet. The American plantation, however, seems to have been as much a show of wealth as anything else. This tour was conducted by a hoop-skirted lady with a fake accent and was like a walk through the set of Gone With the Wind - very romanticised and surreal. The people who actually did the real work were not even mentioned.

I am now looking forward to an overnight Greyhound ride to Atlanta, Georgia as my tour of the south continues.