the last wilderness swamp tour

As Sierra Club members who wish to protect as well as experience the natural environment, we found this tour to be particularly enlightening. In addition to seeing plants and wildlife in their natural habitat, we also witnessed damage caused by logging, drilling and canal building that are changing this unique ecosystem forever. Our guide was Dean Wilson, an activist at the forefront of the effort to preserve what is left, and the fight to restore what has been lost. Taking this tour assists those important efforts, so you will have fun, learn a lot, and help to preserve a national treasure.

On our recent trip to New Orleans we wanted to finally make a trip to see a swamp. Many of the advertised swamp tours are in large air boats and I feel promote a fairly circus-like atmosphere by luring the alligators towards the boat with marshmallows or other food. While doing a little research into a few different swamp tours, we came across this "Last Wilderness" company and it seemed that what they provided was more what we were looking for. They use a small fishing boat, not these enormous air boats, and as a result can get deeper into the swamp and more up close with a lot of the wildlife. They do NOT feed any of the wildlife and in fact specifically state on their website that they cant promise you will see any alligators due to this but the fact of the matter is that almost every time you will see all sorts of wildlife including alligators. Plaquemine is about 80 miles (or an hour and a half drive) from the French Quarter , for those of you who would be staying in New Orleans. We got a rental car for the day to go here - this company is small and does not include any transportation so that part is on you. It is a father and son who give the tours; you would have to call them to reserve a tour and in our case we were the only two people on our tour. The normal procedure is then to meet up at a place called "The Bayou Bait Shop" which is a small little shop about a mile or so away from where you will launch into the river which leads you to the swamp. We got a full two hour tour, and the price was 40 dollars each which we found is a little less than the larger swamp tour companies. We felt this tour was definitely worth the little extra effort to get to - the Father part of this father and son team is the Achtafalaya Basinkeeper and has spent his life fighting for the preservation of the swamp and is very passionate and knowledgeable about it. The son, who gave us our tour, is also very knowledgeable and showed us some ancient cypress trees as well as explained the methods of catching crawfish. We couldnt have been more pleased with this tour and would highly recommend it to anyone looking to explore the swamps.