Monday 6 December 1999
Highlights: Voodoo and New Orleans Crypts

A late start to the day getting up around 9.30 am.  Today we went on the Voodoo / Cemetery walking tour.  Our guide explained how voodoo developed in New Orleans and how it has partially merged with Christian briefs to ensure local acceptance or at least some tolerance.

Voodoo is based on the belief that everything has a spirit or force and how you can pull good things to you and keep bad things at bay.  It is rarely about voodoo dolls and curses.

The New Orleans Cemetery is unlike any that I’ve experienced before.  Because the nearby Mississippi River used to regularly flood the locals could not bury the dead underground as they would be washed away.  As a result they had to ‘bury’ people above ground in crypts.

Today marked the quarter stage of this world trip and the start of another overnight bus ride to Memphis.