Tiffany:

It was more difficult to get up the next day, and not just because of hangovers. The suite had turned cold in the night. We’d ignored the space heaters placed around our rooms, and morning dawned with a frigidity I hadn’t imagined ever touched the deep south.

Although the swamp didn’t figure too deeply (just one scene) in our first book, we knew it would be of vital importance in our sequel. On our hosts’ recommendation, we’d booked a place on Champagne’s Cajun Swamp Tours that day, so after breakfast we drove out to the shore of Lake Martin where a ramshackle building stood beside a collection of wooden docks where canoes and kayaks were stacked.

We piled into a long, motor propelled aluminum boat with a bunch of other tourists. The day was sharp and sunny, the reflections off the water bright enough to blind. Our tour guide, Alan, wore a thick camouflage jacket and steered us on a watery path between the trees, presenting us with swamp facts as he went. I had expected the water to be stagnant, leech-infested slime, filled with horrors too snaggletoothed to comprehend, but reality was a revelation. It was beautiful: blades of sun poking between the lacework of Spanish moss, slicing through water clear enough that we could see all the way to the bottom. There was no smelly, rotting vegetation, no half-dissolved carcasses of any kind, and the prospect of never being seen or heard from again seemed slight. We saw a bedraggled, miserable-looking nutria swim across our path; an American Bald Eagle that was just chilling in the topmost branches of a huge cypress; lots of geese. Sadly, there was not an alligator in sight.

Near the end of the tour, my fingers and ears were beginning to go numb, and our guide plunked his big ol’ camo jacket down around my shoulders. I’d been shivering because I was dumb and had only brought a sweater with me, and although the sun was warm, in the shadows on the water it was windy and cold. It was nice to be warm, but I felt bad for our guide: his Southern Hospitality might very well get his digits frozen off someday.

After the swamp we ate lunch at Duffy’s Diner (Boudin Balls and Po’boys), fiddle-faddled around town some more (found our main character’s house, took our own tour around the outskirts of town, envisioned where other characters might live) until we ended up at Clementine’s, drinking Sazeracs as the musicians set up. We sat at the bar, a huge slab of ancient mahogany, and discussed the fact that the surname of the antagonists in our very own book was, unbelievably, spelled out in stained glass above the entrance. (WHAT WERE THE CHANCES??)  We asked a passing waiter what that was all about, and apparently, the stained glass had been there since before Clementine’s was Clementine’s. It was old enough that even though the significance of the name had been lost, nobody wanted to destroy it. This prompted much stroking of chins and sage looks into the distance from Rachel as we pondered how to work it into our novel.

Breakfast the next day was mushroom and egg omelets accompanied by flat biscuits that Miss Jo kept apologizing for in spite of the fact that they were delicious. Our hostess’s story about the previous owner of Shadows on the Teche, an historical plantation house about a block away on Main Street that offered daily tours, made us laugh:  apparently, he had fallen off his roof after dropping a cigarette down his own shorts. That sounded suspiciously like some people we knew.

Inspired by Miss Jo’s story we took a tour of that historical house. It was interesting because the layout made no sense: none of the rooms seemed to be connected, although almost all of them had a door to outside. Important rooms were completely disjointed from the main house. But the grounds were amazing; the Teche sparkled right off the back yard while fountains and massive old trees dominated the garden.

That afternoon we drank coffee and took surreptitious, ironic pictures with a Trump sign (the first we had ever seen!  The South was like a different planet!) before heading out to Avery Island, home of Tabasco Sauce and the Jungle Gardens.

We picked up a CD of Zydeco music from the Tabasco gift shop and listened at full volume as we took the driving tour around the Jungle Gardens, a place that seemed deserving of its name. We’d picked up Biscuits-and-Gravy flavored potato chips at a convenience store, and during out tour we ate them by the handful. We kept getting out of the car to look around, especially in places where the signs warned us to look out for alligators. Every time we passed into a shadowed space, or into the midst of too many bamboo stalks, one of us would narrate loudly, “AND THEY WERE NEVER SEEN OR HEARD FROM AGAIN!” which would crack the other one up. But in hindsight, except for a few times in New Orleans, it might never have been more true than in the alligator areas of that park.

After our garden tour, we were ready to head to New Orleans. Except for one thing:  an unforeseen poop.

I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but pooping gets unpredictable for me on vacation. In this case, I blame the Biscuits-and-Gravy potato chips. We went to the bathroom to pee, but it turned out this was going to be the first time in our friendship history that we pooped in the same room, separated only by the thin wall between the two bathroom stalls.

Let me preface this by saying Rachel and I have been friends since 1997. We’ve been through a lot, and seen each other through some pretty embarrassing situations. But until that point, our relationship never included pooping anywhere near each other. And I couldn’t deal with it. I had to put on the noisemaker on my phone, the one I mostly use when I have to sleep in a too-silent place, just to hide any errant bodily noises that might slip out.

Well, let me tell you, this worked like a charm!  We gabbled loudly over the whooshing white noise of my phone while crapping in synchronous harmony, cracking jokes, laughing, and making crude, running commentary.

Rachel went uncharacteristically quiet after flushing, but I kept on joking around until, turning off my noisemaker and exiting my stall, I saw that a line of 4 or 5 women had formed out the door. Let’s just say that none of them seemed amused by what they had heard. In silent embarrassment, I joined Rachel at the sink to wash my hands and tried not to look at her, both of our faces beet red, tears forming from suppressed giggles. We brushed past line without meeting anyone’s eyes and booked it to the car, almost choking on our laughter.

We high-tailed it out of New Iberia and laughed all the way to New Orleans, firmly convinced that what happened in that bathroom would be the most ridiculous moment of our trip.