US: Juan had been trying to get out of New Orleans every day for almost a week when he heard that I was leaving the city for a few hours to refuel the car and recharge the phone and computer.
At 30, he has spent all his life in the city, working for Tower Records until last week. Now he's heading for Albuquerque, where he can stay with a friend for a month before moving to wherever he can find a job. "I'll go anywhere, it doesn't really matter," he said.
Before the hurricane, Juan turned down the chance to leave the city, partly because he didn't want to impose on friends but also because he relished the adventure of staying in town. After the storm passed, everything seemed fine at first, but by Wednesday last friends were calling to urge him to leave.
"One said: 'If you don't go now, you might as well put a toe tag on because you're dead'," he said.
He trekked through the water to the Superdome, wearing shorts and running shoes, but as he approached he met people who reported rapes and shootings inside so he waited on a motorway ramp nearby.
"I'd heard the president saying on the radio there were buses coming, so I waited. It was raining again, and you could see the water coming up, and I waited for three hours. The National Guard came over and said get off the ramp and into the Superdome or go home. I went home," he said.
Juan tried again at the Convention Centre on Thursday, but when two buses came people rushed them, and the drivers drove off scared.
"I walked back and on my way I saw an abandoned cop car on Decatur Street. An abandoned cop car! That's when I thought, they're not coming for these people," he said.
By the weekend, he had run out of food and was running low on water and starting to feel desperate. By now, buses were leaving the Superdome, but the evacuees who boarded them often didn't know where they were heading. Many were school buses, designed for short journeys, rather than the air-conditioned coaches suitable for long trips.
As we prepared to leave - Juan carrying just one bag with clothes, documents and his favourite CDs - a woman in her 60s approached. She wore her bleached hair long under a black straw hat studded with Harley Davidson badges, and her name was Tedde.
"Can I come with you? If you take me to my house, my bag is packed," she said.
The plan was to go to Gonzales, about 50 miles outside New Orleans, where Juan would stay with friends of friends for a night and Tedde would call her boyfriend, a trucker, who would come and pick her up.
Along the way, we stopped at the Super 8 Motel in Luling, so that I could recharge my phone. When the owner heard that Juan and Tedde had left New Orleans, she insisted that we come inside for red beans, rice and sausage and a cold drink. Another guest asked if the evacuees had money and pressed $100 on Tedde.
In Gonzales, we found the house full of refugees from the hurricane, all preparing to start new lives somewhere, anywhere else.
There was Gina, a gently maturing glamour model who had escaped with her two poodles by swimming (while wearing high-heel boots) until a boat picked her up. She was going to stay next to an alligator farm in Louisiana for a month until she worked out what to do.
Scott and Tierney would go to Wisconsin, where Scott would try to get a job in advertising and Tierney would see if she could finish the degree she started at the University of New Orleans.
Their lives turned upside down and the future anybody's guess, they spend the evening laughing and joking and counting their blessings. Tedde said: "I suppose I'll have to be a trucker for the next few months. I'm not going to like it but, hell, I'm the luckiest woman in New Orleans."