Day 37 La Grande Boucherie

This is going to be very challenging, but here goes. Eight of us met up in the hotel lobby at 6:30 this morning so we could be at the Cafe Des Amis in the town of Breaux Bridge (Crawfish Capitol of the World) by 7:15 in order to stand in line when they opened the doors at 7:30 for breakfast. This, I thought, was crazy. My thinking was that it would make more sense to go to Fred's Bar in Mamou for their 7 o'clock Happy Hour and their celebrated Zydeco band. My disappointment was short lived. The Cafe Des Amis was great. It started with a plate of Beignets, followed by a Tasso Ham Omelette and Grits with Andouille. Sylvia had Crawfish Etouffee over a biscuit. Everybody ordered something different and all were happy with their food especially since it was accompanied by four or five pitchers of Mimosas. But, the breakfast wasn't why people lined up at seven o'clock in the morning. The real attraction was the Zydeco Band that started playing at eight. The first note was barely played by the time the smallish dance floor was absolutely packed (picture). We drank and danced for a couple of hours and as we left we saw that the line waiting to get in was still a half a block up the street. What a breakfast party! Afterwards we took a ride down to the levee and made a couple of required stops; first at Pat's Fishermans Wharf in Henderson, and then at Red's Levee Bar, a tiny little hole in the wall joint right on the levee. After a few beers Fred thought it would be a good idea to head down to St. Martinville for the La Grande Boucherie des Cajuns (a festival of the butchering of pigs, Cajun style). What I'm going to tell you now is the absolute truth. Besides having the standard four different Zydeco bands, there was first a Squeal Like a Pig contest, second a Cracklin Throwing contest, third a “Battle on the Teche” Arm Wresting contest, fourth the Louisiana Ice Gator Dancing Girls, and then the highlight of the afternoon, they slaughtered and butchered a pig. The pig thing wasn't all that great, but the food was totally different from that of any other festival I've been to. The best was the crispy fried alligator. Normally you just get small alligator bites. These were large chunks of juicy, tender meat. We also had Boudin Balls (remember-a pork and rice sausage), Cracklin, a Fried Pork Chop sandwich, Jambalaya, and more beer. This was a good stop. Ok, you would think by now we were done...nooooo. Fred, Hillary, Jason and I drove up to Church Point where 40 or 50 friends of Fred were partying in an old machine shop shed and boiling tons of crawfish. We did not need more food, but we also didn't want to insult anyone, so we downed a couple of pounds. This party was just practice for the big day tomorrow “The Church Point Courir De Mardi Gras”.