Cajun Encounters Tour Company

We had Meme as our bus driver. Very professional, very friendly, and informative.
We had Capt. Barry. He was awesome as well. We learned a lot. It was very interesting.my 1st time to New Orleans and a swamp tour. Did not disappoint! Thank you Meme and Captain Barry.

Several of us went on a City Tour, our guide Steve made this such an awesome experience! Great personality and my drink from Seven Three was the best!

Mr B, our bus driver was great! We were picked up right on time. He was entertaining and informative of area while we drove to the destination. It rained the day of our tour. Our boat had a roof, sat about 20 people. Keep this in mind because more expensive tours are smaller in number, but do not have a roof.. Our boat captain was Captain Everett. He was friendly, fun, and explained everything in detail. Would HIGHLY recommend

Editing to add photos**

WOW! Amazing tour and the best part of my New Orleans trip.
We got a small VIP boat that got up to 12 people that included pick up. We were a group of 6.

Pick up location was easy to find. We got picked up by a huge bus and the driver was Dwayne or Duane (sp?).
Nicknames: The rock, Pebbles, Dwayne the sock Johnson.
Let me tell you, he made the 45 min bus ride fun and interesting! We learned so much about Louisiana. He was funny and had a lot of great facts about Louisiana and the things from here. On the way back, when he didn't need to talk to us, he still did and we learned even more stuff! Great bus ride, all thanks to Dwayne.

Arriving at Cajun Encounters, they have bathrooms. I even saw a little lizard while going pee. There is a small gift shop where you can buy souvenirs, snacks and drinks. You go to the counter to check in and are given a colored band. Then you go out back - there is a walkway where you can see some swampy area and the whisky tree. They also have a ring toss game that our group made us of while waiting.

Our boat consisted of 8 people total.
The VIP tour boat is a smaller boat. However, it does not have a cover. The bigger boats have a cover. So if you are doing VIP, bring sunscreen! One of our friends got sunburnt.
Capt. Billy led our tour. He gave us valuable information on the swamp, zoomed us around in his boat! That was fun, the breeze feels great.
They also gave us cold waters.

We saw alligators - they came up close! We saw wild pigs (they are so cute). We also saw sweet sweet raccoons.
When you get to the end of the tour you go through a swampy area that is surrounded by trees. I loved this.
It was really cool to see some of the devestating effects the hurricane left there too. Uprooted trees and whatnot.

Overall, this is definitely my favorite thing that I did during my trip to LA! I highly, highly recommend this company!

I have to say - I was incredibly skeptical about a "swamp tour" but I was wrong. It was probably one of the highlights of my trip!

I opted for the bus pick up and drop off and the swamp tour. Everything went pretty smooth. We got lucky with Captain Emmett and he made the tour a ton of fun. You're not just gonna see alligators- there's tons of snakes and friendly raccoons too.

Our guide was really knowledgeable and we picked his brain for sure. It was a lot of fun and a great experience. I'd definitely do it again. Don't forget to visit the gift shop! They've got some great stickers and magnets.

Gayle, David, and I recently experienced the Swamp (including Hungry Alligators) via this most excellent tour. And in a NOLA trip of many highlights, this was one of the best.

Bus pickup was at a local Hotel and the trip out to the Swamp was maybe an hour each way. Our bus driver (and land guide) was Renee who was both funny and very informative, particularly about what to expect and with a healthy dose of Hurricane Katrina history.

After arriving at the Cajun Encounters staging area, we took our preventive comfort breaks, bought some snacks and water, and maybe purchased a magnetic Zydeco Gator to take home as a souvenir. There was a nice shaded sitting area and good organization to get us on our boats.

Our Swamp guide was Emmett, who was superb. He had that right combination of being informative, funny, and self depreciating. We learned a lot about the Swamp, Gators, Snakes, house boats, property ownership, and anything else someone might ask. We were all very happy as we piled back on the bus and headed home.

Do you ever get a weird song stuck in your head during some experience? As I was on that boat and the bus going home, I had the following lyrics of Swamp Witch by Jim Stafford running through my mind:

Never found Hattie and they never found the shack
Never made the trip back in
There was a parchment note they found tacked to a stump
Said don't come lookin' again.

Just a reminder that as beautiful as the Swamp is, the Black Bayou can still a dangerous place. That's why there are folks like Cajun Encounters to maintain our safety.

TBH, I was skeptical about all the great reviews. However, they really made it work for my friends and I!

Originally, our tour was on a Friday. However, one of my friends ended up with food poisoning. I think it was the raw oysters from the night before. So, we called and messaged in the morning, requesting a date change to Sunday. Without any issues, they gladly moved us over to Sunday.

Come Sunday, we arrived at the meet-up point and were greeted by Larry, aka Bam Bam, our driver. He was entertaining us with the history and stories during the 40-minute drive. As we approached Honey Swamp Island, Larry directed us to the entrance and restroom.

We all stood in a line to get checked-in and were given a blue silicon wristband. Then we waited in the waiting area. On a whiteboard, it showed who our Captain would be. For us blue, we got Captain Randy! He was entertaining, fun, and very knowledgeable. Although it's not alligator season, we were able to see a couple of alligators, some turtles, and some raccoons. When we got back, we were able to hold a baby alligator, which made my day!

Overall, it was a great experience and I would recommend it!

We did the ghost bus tour. This was a good tour as this is our third visit to Nola and we've done a ghost tour everytime so this bus tour was different than the other ones we've done. I did read the reviews first and most said it was cheesy

Honestly I felt like the driver was more cheesy than the videos on the bus. It was nice to drive around the town instead of walking around the French quarter for the millionth time. I also liked the cafe du monde city park stop because my parents really wanted beignets but the French quarter location was kind of a shit show when we tried to go on our last 2 visits. If you're looking for something different to do and have already done other ghost tours in the city I recommend reading the reviews and taking this one if it sounds interesting to you.

I took three tours with this company and enjoyed all of them.

1. The Ghost Bus Tour: it is a good tour, though a bit cheesy. It's all done via video that's GPS operated. The videos are good, and you get some nice views of the city at night. You get to stop at a cemetery and one house that was a filming site.

2. The city Cemetary Tour: Our guide's name was Butch. He gave a really informative and fun tour. You get to tour one cemetery on foot and also stop at the City Park location of Cafe Du Monde for coffee and beignets. You get a good overview of the city and its neighborhoods.

3. Swamp tour: I took the smaller boat tour for adults only. Our Captain was Captain Jessup. He was amusing, friendly, knowledgeable, and a good boat captain. We saw lots of wildlife. The most frequent animals we saw were raccoons and limpkins (birds). We also saw several alligators, some great blue herons, and some egrets. It was really fun!

I'd recommend this tour company. They were helpful and friendly with booking, and all their tours were good quality.

It's super worth it to spend a little more and pay for the Day Swamp Tour with round trip pick up. Because if we did Lyft, geez it'd be sooooo expensive! So definitely worth the extra fee for round trip pick up and you can choose the closest pick up location to your hotel accommodations in Downtown NOLA. The coach bus was comfortable with a standard level of air-conditioning and our driver, D, was very cool and helped make the bus trip a lot more fun with her funny, interesting commentary.

We did the Ghost Bus Tour:

This was a solid tour and worth it for the one time. It was a unique offering where there wasn't a tour guide per se but location based audio as your bus passed through it. The bus driver prepped the tour for any stops made and had a story or two at the end of the tour. I had a great time and the production value was cheesy and campy (but in a good way). I was really happy with how it all turned out in the end!

There was a stop in City Park which allowed you to pick up late night beignets and coffee to keep warm on a winter night. Solid tour! A great job by the staff and crew.