On Sunday arrived in New Orleans to begin the North American section of the trip. Met up with Matt and Beth in the hostel, was great to see them, and catch up on all the news from home. As much as I enjoyed travelling on my own, it makes a nice change to have people around I've known for more than a couple of days.

New Orleans is a really cool city. Most stuff goes on in the French Quarter, which is old and elegent, colourful wooden houses with iron balconies covered in flowers. Music here is brilliant, loads of proper fat old jazz men playing trumpets in tons of bars, and in the days there are loads of cool performers on the streets. It was Independence day on Monday, went down to the banks of the Mississippi to watch a firwork display then headed onto Bourbon Street to visit a few bars. Bourbon Street is crazy, full of neon signs and little kiosks selling cheep beers and disgustingly sweet cocktails of dangerous looking colours. As well as being the home of jazz, New Orleans is also the home of voodoo, and today we did an interesting walking tour to a historic Catholic cemetry, and met a practising voodoo preistess who talked untintelligably for a few minutes and made Beth inhale something from an umarked bottle. We are still waiting to see what effect this will have.