And all that jazz

NEW Orleans is best seen in the early morning. The sub-tropical rays blast through the iron-wrought balconies. They dapple the streets with burning heat and cooling shadows, soon to be destroyed as the sun rises.

The atmosphere is heavy and relentless. It clings but at this time of day it can be managed. By lunchtime, the freezing air conditioning pouring out of every building will be hunted desperately.

At street corners workmen train high-power hoses on the pavement, destroying the stains of the night before. New Orleans is well known for partying. The spray throws rainbows across the streets, empty while revellers sleep off their excesses. Within a couple of hours, they'll be out again.

The city's reputation is well deserved. Bourbon Street, probably one of the world's best known fiesta boulevards, teems with raucous humanity from lunchtime every day.

Each passing body staggers while grasping a white polystyrene cup, filled before leaving one bar to ensure sobriety doesn't strike before the next one is reached. The next is always just a few metres away.

But the atmosphere is friendly and the good-time buzz is contagious. Despite the craziness of some of the regulars - one insists on dressing all in black fishnet and carrying a basket full of cats - the drunken visitors are looking to enjoy themselves.

The street itself is typical of New Orleans' French Quarter, although its crowds are at their densest here. The decoration of the balconies is incredible, plants pouring from them and reaching to the ground. And music beats out of every corner.

This isn't the disco beat heard throughout the world's bars. This is a celebration of heritage, a monument to gospel, jazz and blues on which this city was built.

It is everywhere. Quality bands set up in Jackson Square, outside my hotel window a lone singer pays tribute to Otis Redding each night, and the deep gravel tones of the city's favourite son, Louis Armstrong, can't be escaped - although being force fed Louis on continuous loop in the airport while sitting out a six hour flight delay can dilute his charms.

All this music is the perfect accompaniment to New Orleans. With the relentless heat, the narrow streets and the historic reputation of a city where anything goes, the lazy, laid-back croonings of the blues or the intricate squeal of a jazz sax is the perfect fit for the mood.

Another reputation gives a darker side to the city, and is less likely to be mentioned by the many guides who lead lines of tourists. New Orleans is known to be violent and dangerous, it's a place where care must be taken but, in the French Quarter at least, this adds excitement rather than real risk.

The closest I came to street crime was an attempt at trickery by a makeshift shoe polisher, grasping a brush and what appeared to be a tube of toothpaste. This was funny rather than threatening, and easy to resist.

The quarter is full of reference to those whose names go hand in hand with the deep south. Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner and Anne Rice's homes are easily found. The massive Mississippi rolls along its side, the name evoking images of paddleboats and Huckleberry Finn.

New Orleans is the city that should never have been built. Well below sea level, it suffered from floods and devastating yellow fever epidemics. But, described falsely as heaven on earth in the streets of France, Switzerland and Germany, it soon began to fill with shiploads of unsuspecting Europeans. All were to be extremely disillusioned. Many were soon to be dead.

In a desperate effort to populate the area, French convicts and prostitutes were offered early release from prison if they agreed to move to Louisiana, and so began its reputation as a sordid hotbed which

succumbed to every debauched vice known.

Add the thousands of black slaves landed in the city's first decade, and the population ballooned.

A large part of Louisiana's draw for tourists remains this huge diversity of people, which creates a melting pot atmosphere. Those early settlers of French descent came to be known as Creoles and still make up a central part of the state's community. The language of their motherland continues to be heard on the streets, while Creolean food is everywhere.

Later settlers known as Cajuns made their way from Nova Scotia after being evicted by the British. After a huge migration to find a new home, they eventually arrived in New Orleans. The influx of black slaves brought with it a culture from the African continent including voodooism, still widely practised today.

This mix, accompanied by a sticky heat, climate and geography completely separate from the rest of the USA, creates a romantic mystery for the whole state.

Only a few miles from the centre of New Orleans start the swamps that cover Louisiana. A green algae blanket floating on the water, moss hanging from the trees holding nesting bone-white egrets, they are a sight never forgotten and impossible to miss. The roads cut straight through, standing on stilts embedded in the mud, the cars watched by partly submerged alligators.

Despite New Orleans being one heat-driven rush of life, of round-the-clock partying tourists mingling with suit clad businessmen, it doesn't take much effort to find the slow paced deep south that typifies so many famous films from, To Kill A Mockingbird to In The Heat Of The Night.

Driving west into Cajun country brings up nothing but swampland for 40 miles, followed briefly by the city of Baton Rouge before the highway takes you back into this mysterious, sinister-seeming countryside.

Then you reach the Cajun settlements. This is the first real feel of the true deep south and, amazingly, it lives up to the stereotypes held by an Englishman whose previous experience comes from a diet of TV. The trailer parks stretch along the side of the road, the Stars and Stripes hang beside the flag of Dixie, white-washed homes stand in acres of space and church notice boards preach fundamental Christianity to passing motorists - one tells me to "Flee Fornication". The deep south's reputation for conservatism is more than just a rumour.

A night's stop in Lafayette has to be done, just to experience a town swallowed up by these stereotypes. Billed as the capital of Cajun country, it must be the slowest-paced capital in the USA.

Although the surrounding roads are crowded with busy out-of-town shopping

centres, drive-thru restaurants and motorists, downtown Lafayette seems never to wake. The shops, mostly old-fashioned department stores, look permanently closed. The main street is empty, save for a couple of people lazily hanging around in the shade of the street corners.

This sense of inactivity is maybe down to the fact that the July heat feels a good few degrees hotter than its New Orleans equivalent, and rewards any exertion with a dousing of sweat.

Only the bail bond shops and courthouses seem to be doing any business. It's a strange place to say the least, but travel should offer new experiences, and that of Lafayette won't be found at home.

Adam Nichols travelled with Continental Airlines, which can be contacted on 0800 776 464.

In New Orleans, he stayed at the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel, telephone 001 504 5295333, or visit www.omnihotels.com. In Lafayette, he stayed at

the Blue Moon Hostel, which can be contacted on 001 337 6541444, or at www.bluemoonhostel.com

More information can be gained from the Louisiana Office of Tourism at www.crt.state.la.us

Updated: 16:30 Friday, September 20, 2002