Last week we ventured 2.5 hours west of our home in Cocodrie to the home of Tabasco on Avery Island.

The scent of Tabasco was detected as soon as we stepped from the van, and became stronger still inside the red brick building that houses the only factory in the world where Tabasco sauce is bottled. Since my Dad is an avid fan of tabasco sauce and it was a fixture on my kitchen table ever since I was born, I must say I was excited to take the tour.

Of course, at the completion of the tour we entered the gift shop where we proceeded to taste the large array of free samples of Tabasco brand products. This included jalapeno and sweet and sour ice cream. I think my favorite was the buffalo tabasco sauce, but the newly invented sweet and sour tabasco sauce was quite good as well.

After lunch we took a safari tour of the adjoining 250 acre “Jungle Garden” on the island. Apparently one of the family tabasco sons loved nature and spearheaded preserving the island as a nature preserve. We saw three baby alligators and thousands of snowy egrets on “Bird Island”. As we observed the bird colony, Alicia even saw one bird lay an egg. And yes, that is a 1,000 year old Buddha statue that you see, down in the swamp of Louisiana.