#daubanfamily

[sandjsbeachbumbonanza]

Day 82 – the Silhouette island tour

Breakfast this morning was a little bit better. We had the chickpea curry today and asked to sit away from the large families. The staff today seemed much more attentive than they have been and J even got a plate of watermelon.

We went back to the room and did more admin, including getting caught up on Tripadvisor reviews. We then headed to the Silhouette medical centre by buggy for our 11th COVID test. This was a quickie – barely 5 seconds. We then stopped by the dive shop to get information about snorkelling tours. The buggy driver was a friendly chap and told us a bit about the island. There is a shop, but it is only available to the locals. Apparently all the staff have received a COVID vaccine and should be getting their second dose shortly. For now they are not allowed to visit the main island as it is quite locked down. He also explained that this Hilton is popular with families as there are no cars. This means kids can safely run wild and unsupervised around the island.

We have also figured out that they are doing a lot of renovation during the downtime. Not so nice for the current guests, but it will likely help when the resort reopens properly.

We took the Silhouette history tour today. We jumped into a buggy which took us to the Silhouette museum, at the Grann Kaz restaurant. This was the plantation home for the Dauban family, a French, aristocratic family that owned Silhouette island from around 1860 – 1960 and ran it as a coconut, breadfruit and vanilla plantation. We saw the original house as well as the mausoleum, where some of the Dauban family are buried. We also saw the local village where around 50 local villagers live. The rest of the island is apparently reserved for the Labriz hotel and staff. There is also a small conservation contingent who live here as well. It was a nice tour and we learned that Catherine Dauban still haunts the plantation house at night.

We had our usual happy hour drinks and went back to the Grann Kaz for dinner. The German family with the behaved child, a little boy named Otto, also got into our buggy to the restaurant. They were friendly.

The food at the restaurant was decent to good. S really liked the hearts of palm salad. Unfortunately they were out of avocado, so J basically had a plate of tomatoes. S’ octopus curry and J’s creole jobfish were fine, but again, not spectacular. Weirdly, J noticed the creole sauce here was similar to the creole sauce she had in St Vincent. The atmosphere at the restaurant was pretty lively and we saw a group of 8 adults that were having a great time and were still going after we left.

J got 4 mosquito bites today. S got considerably more as he didn’t wear his repellent today.