Bougainvillea hung in huge clumps from the grillwork and bloomed as bright as drops of blood
'NOW, I know it's somewhere round here," the taxi driver repeated endlessly in her Creole-accented American English, as we circled yet another block in search of South Pierce Street and our New Orleans B&B.
The Big Easy address we were after was proving difficult to find and we had that sinking feeling you get when you've booked and paid on the Internet for accommodation you've never seen.
After our third circle round the block, she called a friend - it may have been her local voodoo priest, we would never know - on her cellphone and, after some animated Creole chatter, thrust the phone at me.
I repeated the address to the unknown oracle, who must have given her the correct instructions because two turns later we drew up outside the 1896 O' Malley House. It was real - and our Colonel Parker suite was even more elegant and welcoming than its web pictures.
James Lee Burke's evocative descriptions of New Iberia, Louisiana, and the meals enjoyed by his fictional detective, Dave Robicheaux, was the impetus for our first US road trip, which would begin in New Orleans, end in Washington DC and take us to Cajun country and anywhere that felt good in the week in-between.
Originally our trip was intended as an adventure in a "pre-owned" convertible we would buy from some shady car dealer. We would stay in low-life motels, wear baggy shorts and tour the South over several weeks.
But life being what it is, we had to pare down this grand plan and, in the end, squeeze the trip into a gap between business appointments in April.
It wasn't the best week for a southern Cajun-focussed trip - the festivals (crawfish and music in the main) take place after Easter, and we wimped out and opted for a hire car with GPS.
We also ditched the sleazy motel idea and opted instead for high-end B&Bs, which we selected rather randomly, late at night, through Trip Advisor.
Burke describes traditional New Orleans as being "like a piece of South America that has been sawed loose from its moorings and blown by trade winds across the Caribbean until it affixed itself to the southern rim of the United States".
In Pegasus Descending, one of his Robicheaux novels, the detective reminisces about how, as a young patrolman, he would start Sunday in the city with "a stroll across Jackson Square in the coolness of the shadows while sidewalk artists were setting up their easels along a pike fence that was overhung by palm fronds and oak boughs.
"At an outdoor table in the Café du Monde over beignets and coffee with hot milk, I would watch the pinkness of the morning spread across the Quarter, the unicyclists pirouetting in front of the cathedral, jugglers tossing wood balls in the air, street bands who played for tips knocking out Tin Roof Blues and Rampart Street Parade.
"The balconies along the streets groaned with the weight of potted plants, and bougainvillea hung in huge clumps from the grillwork and bloomed as bright as drops of blood in the sunlight."
The French Quarter escaped the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
We sauntered the streets on a Saturday and substituted the Café des Beignets for the Café du Monde. We could barely finish our standard portions of deep-fried doughnuts. We licked the sugar off our fingers as we sauntered along Royal Street, listening to the bands playing on every corner and peering into antique shops.
We were back that night in Bourbon Street, after our jambalaya meal at a restaurant with shuttered French doors. Hard rock poured from the clubs filled with wild students on Spring Break.
On the balconies, co-eds lifted their tops to flash the crowd. New Orleans is a party city - with slightly decadent, sexy overtones.
The city is full of great restaurants, skulls and skeletons, Harleys and biker paraphernalia.
I got a tattoo - a stick-on - and my husband bought a clutch of rocker T-shirts. I made the mistake of not snapping up a black Juju doll in the curio shop, shelled out for a CD from the G-String quartet, who'd got me dancing in the street, and bought Cajun spices called "Slap ya Mama" and "Punch ya Daddy."
On Sunday, on the recommendation of our hosts, we set off for a Cajun dance hall and restaurant, Mulate's in Breaux Bridge.
The route there took us through Robicheaux's New Iberia home district or parish, as they're called in the south.
Robicheaux's (and Burke's) adored Bayou Teche is a brown river meandering past wooden homes - some romantic, some dilapidated and weather-beaten - and under drooping trees. Pleasure pontoons, cruisers and rough, wooden skiffs pottered in and out of the bends.
Breaux Bridge is on the water and was officially founded by a redoubtable young Acadian widow called Scholastique. According to local Chitimacha Indian legend, the Bayou Teche itself was formed by indentations left by a snake in its death throes.
Below the elevated highways stretches a wilderness of water, cypress and alligators - the Atchafalaya Basin.
In Pegasus Descending, Robicheaux backs his trailer down the concrete ramp at Henderson and slides his boat into the water for an afternoon fishing trip.
"The day was hot, the wind down, the water dead-still in the covers. Out on the vast expanse of bays and channels and island of willow and gum trees that comprised the swamp I could see other fishermen anchored hard by the pilings of the interstate highway and the desiccated wood platforms of oil rigs that had long ago been torn down and hauled away."
We did the same. The new treasure of the swamps is "sinkers" - submerged cypress logs, felled by loggers 100 or more years ago, which now fetch a fortune from upmarket furniture crafters as the ultimate eco-friendly aged wood. Steve Couzet, our own grizzled swamp guide, talked up the alligators but it was clear he was far more interested in the massive trunks sticking up from the swamp bed.
Back at Isabelle Inn, our cool, high-ceilinged B&B across the road from Mulate's - which, for the first time in living memory, or so the locals told us, was closed on Easter Sunday, we sat in wooden rockers on the verandah with glasses of white wine and watched the ill-tempered terrapins on the edge of the bayou. We planned our next outing - to Pat's, the home of crawfish, though we were still full from our rib-sticking pork-neck stew at the local Cajun market and restaurant, Poches.
There was no backing out: the Louisiana legislature has designated Breaux Bridge the crawfish capital of the world. It's also the home of crawfish etouffee.
At sunset, we were at Pat's and grappling with bowls of the bite-sized lobsters they call crawfish. We sampled another jambalaya at our chequered-cloth table and stared across the bayou at a skiff where two men - Dave and his sidekick Clete perhaps? - were slinging lazy lines from their jetty-moored boat into the sluggish river.
In Mulate's, the Cajun "orkes" (meaning orchestra or band) had a table full of older folk - older than us anyway - up and dancing what looked very much like a vigorous vastrap. We got onto the wooden dance floor ourselves and exhausted ourselves with a fast-paced two-step.
Then it was onto the straight Interstate and away from the endless flat plains of water, heading for South Carolina and the Blue Ridge mountains. We took the Natchez trail - sketched for us by a fat New Orleans waiter on the back of a napkin - and rode up the mountains into Lynyrd Skynyrd country, forests, and, probably, bears.
Two thousand miles later, we were in Washington DC and I was ready to start all over. Next time we'll go for the first full weekend in May to catch Breaux Bridge's three-day Crawfish Festival, then hit the road again - on a Harley.
CAJUN AND CREOLE
Cajuns are descendants of the French settlers who first settled in eastern Canada. They believed they had found heaven on earth and called their land Arcadia or Acadie. Initially, after the English won the settlements of Canada from the French, they were left in peace as neutrals.
But when they subsequently refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the English crown, they were forced into exile. One band headed for New Orleans and from there out into the isolated southwest of Louisiana to live off their land and found their New Arcadia near what would eventually become Breaux Bridge. Cajun is a bastardisation of the word Acadian.
Creoles are descendants of the mix of nationalities, French, Spanish, Indian and African, who mixed in New Orleans.
So how do you tell the difference between Cajun and Creole food?
Mulate's says one way is by colour. Cajun gumbo and jambalaya is brown and doesn't use tomatoes. Creole cooking makes use of tomatoes and has a reddish tint. Beware - if it's not red or brown it is usually deep-fried.
The latest Robicheaux book by James Lee Burke is The Glass Rainbow.
