Olas Permanantes...

We have just left Olas Permanates after 10 idyllic days on the beach. We are now back with James and Lysinea for a night and tomorrow we head to the Tica bus hotel for the night and get the bus at 2:30 am - arriving in Managua at 12:00 lunch time.

The last few days have been fun filled - we were woken a few nights ago by a massive thunder storm overhead which woke everyone in the hotel (apart from Sam of course). The next night I woke up and felt the room shaking, I thought I must be imaging it, but it happened a couple of times... I decided it was probably just a little earth tremor and as the ceiling hadn't fallen in I went back to sleep. The next morning we realised that it had been caused by waves crashing over the wall and landing about 5 metres from our bedroom! The same happened for the next few nights and although I didn't stay awake the whole night I did have a lot of water filled dreams. The good news is we weren't flooded.

In all we had an amazing time at the beach and really none of us wanted to leave at all. The place was so beautiful (check out the sunset) and the people were so kind and helpful, we felt really welcomed and very safe and I would highly recommend El Zonte and Olas Permenates to anyone travelling to El Salvador. The waves break just in front of the hotel (when they aren't coming over the wall) and both Sam and Will were able to surf all day ever day. I have been doing yoga, shiatsu and reading in a hammock, we have all returned to James's bronzed, tired and happy. There were also lots of great people staying at the hostel who Sam adored, they played ping pong with him, surfed with him, swam with him and generally made him a very happy boy. We hope to meet them in Popoyo in Nicaragua in a few weeks.

We have now officially started schooling and it's going very well. Sam has studied English, Maths and Science so far and has started reading his book (a chapter a day). We tend to study one subject a day and this seems to work well for us all. It's fun to learn science on the move and Sam actually seems to be learning.

So that's the latest - as I said El Salvador is brilliant and the land and the people we met are beeeautiful. More from Nicaragua in a few days.

The tickets are booked and paid for... the route is planned (ish)... work is finished and the house is being packed up as I type... there's no backing out now. We have books for schooling (but how we use them is yet to be decided) so as you can see the preparations are under way but it all feels a bit up in the air. I guess this is the time to let go of control and allow things to just flow in a zen type way (2 sessions of yoga this week I think!)

Our current route includes 3 months in Central and South America, 3 months in New Zealand, 3 months in Australia and 3 months in Indonesia.

Everyone asks if Sam is excited, but it's hard to say. I have asked him many times how he is feeling and his usual answer is nervous and excited which I guess is the perfect mix (more excited than nervous apparently). He's obviously not looking forward to saying goodbye to family and friends and especially his Dad but he knows this will be a great year (and a year out of school kind of overshadows all the bad stuff). 12 is a funny age because he has just done his first year at secondary school and feels grown up but isn't quite emotionally ready for the responsibilities of grown up stuff so we will see how this year progresses, I have a feeling we will take away a boy and bring back a man but we'll see.