The swamp airboat skimmed across the beer-bottle waters of the Atchafalaya Basin in a putt-putting bluster of noise. The vast wetland east of Lafayette mirrored the large Louisiana sky, cloud-smudged and cornflower blue. Shards of dried cypress punctured the wrinkled waters like fish teeth, distracting my unpractised eyes from spotting our elusive quarry.
My skipper was Armond Berard – a delightfully unvarnished bayou boatman complete with hoary beard and a voice like a double bass. Unlike Armond, I claim no expertise in alligator spotting or swamp tours, but had always assumed that the gators generally stayed on the outside of the boat: not so.
