The Bayou Manchac is an 18-mile stretch of Louisiana swamp connecting the Mississippi River in the west to the Amite River in the east, and separating East Baton Rouge, Ascension and Iberville Parishes. The bayou is only an hour's drive from New Orleans, but it feels like another world. Instead of navigating around grinning buskers and through throbbing nightclubs, I paddled my kayak past stone-still alligators and cypress trees dripping in Spanish moss. Instead of voodoo temples and haunted cemeteries, my guide pointed out herons, turtles, and owl nests.
But as I soon discovered, the same energy that flows through the lively streets of the Big Easy also infuses the bayou's waters. The swamp is simultaneously bright and dark, loudly alive and eerily close to death. And, like New Orleans, it's packed with history—some true, some legend, and some too bizarre to believe.
