New Orleans is an incessant feast for the senses. The beignets are divine. The fried pickles a revelation. Music pours out of windows like water through a spigot. NOLA (as locals call it) is literally busting at the seams with life. Perhaps that’s why, just a short ride out of town, past the still-present devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, a former slave plantation felt as cold as the hand of death. The evil of the place was as silently palpable as the cacophonous riot just a few miles back down the road.