Just as in Brazil the carnival costumes take a year to produce and thousands of dollars, but the Mardi Gras Indians are back in New Orleans. The feathered and beaded costumes that were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina are slowly being replaced and the competition between the tribes, which originated with fighting, is now a quest to be the best turned out. Today is Fat Tuesday but the New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations started at the weekend.

Hotels and restaurants in the city are reporting that business is better than last year and the crowds are spending money, particularly in the French Quarter. Flights to New Orleans, which were reduced to 68 a day in 2006, numbered 110 this year. An additional 17,000 hotel rooms are available for visitors and 50 major parades took to the street. The city’s Tourism Marketing Corporation reported over 95% of available rooms were booked.

Inside Harrah’s New Orleans Casino & Hotel that covers an entire city block there are life-sized Mardi Gras floats as well as French Quarter balconies. For slots aficionados there are even WMS Gaming’s Mardi Gras Madness video machines to play. This year’s visitor numbers to the United States’ Mardi Gras city are expected to far exceed the 700,000 that made their way there last year. Business, apart from staff shortages, is almost back to normal. (E-02.20.07)

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