In this week of travel I get my fitness back on track by joining a gym (day 262), and we made a trip to Addo Elephant National Park (days 263-264). Later in the week I get back into some tech and put Claude Code to the test (days 265-268), I created an app in a few hours that would have taken me weeks to manually code.

Travel Log: Day 262 (3/16), South Africa

Normal school day, and in the middle of school I went and joined the gym I was looking at named Persellos Fitness Centre. It was the same process as Thailand. Just a form to fill out and it cost about $33 for a month. I worked out lower body immediately after that. I bought creatine from their supplement counter, but their protein wasn’t isolate so I passed on that.

In the afternoon BC worked on a math problem he couldn’t finish during math time, and then we went to the mall. The mall was great, sort of half indoor half outdoor. It was full of things we needed as well. BC got a haircut, I got whey isolate, AC surprisingly found The Outsiders at a book store, and JC found mascara.

We planned for the Addo trip in the evening.

Travel Log: Day 263 (3/17), South Africa

I went to the gym early this morning, at around 6:30am to get a workout before leaving for Addo. After my workout as I was leaving, the girl at the front desk told me I could put my stuff in the locker room. I had been carrying my bag around with me as I worked out. She said the locker room was safe, they had cameras, and nothing would get stolen. I’m definitely not going to do that, at least with anything valuable in it.

Driving To Addo

We left for Addo a little after 8am. First we stopped for gas; the first time in South Africa. It was actually sort of nice because we just stay in the car while they pump the gas, wash the windshield, and check tire pressure. They bring a card terminal to the window for payment, and I tipped him 20R.

The drive was decent, but I was surprised how often I had to pass slow vehicles. It was generally one lane each way, and it it was a constant process of pass truck, go for a while, pass another truck. There was good access to pass though, and I never felt trapped for long behind slow moving vehicles. Most slow drivers also do this cool thing where they pull way over to the shoulder of the road at their current speed so you can squeeze through without having to go into the oncoming lane. I learned to do a thank you with the hazards after seeing other passers do that. The drivers here are very thoughtful and courteous.

Hike

A few hours into the drive, we stopped at a spot to hike that turned out to be more than we wanted to deal with. We followed one of several trails called the forest trail which was rated “easy”. It was anything but easy, with steep ups and downs navigating rocks and having to hold trees to steady our steps up and down. We didn’t finish the route, only going about 20 minutes down the trail and then 20 minutes back.

There was a picnic table where we parked that we ate lunch at. Then we hit the road for the Airbnb. Google maps took us on an alternate route that seemed a little sketchy at first. We drove by a shanty town, and the roads were pretty rough. We got there without too much trouble though.

Addo

After having coffee and relaxing for a few minutes at this really nice Airbnb, we got back on the road to drive around Addo. We went through the front gate which was like a security check (license, passport, check trunk for plants/animals). Then we went to the main office and paid the conservation fee, and we were on our way.

Right away we started to see animals. In all we saw zebra, an Ibex, other Ibex looking things, meerkats, elephants, warthogs, and dung beetles. On the large loop we were able to complete, I bottomed out the car pretty hard. It was a dirt road and had a washout area. I tried to navigate it carefully, but not carefully enough I guess.

After we got back to our Airbnb BC and I assessed the damage. There is definitely damage, and I assume it was from what I did but I’m not sure. I think it’s just cosmetic with paint on the underside of the bumper scraped off, scrapes on the skid place, and maybe a dent under the drivers side of the car. I’ve been checking to make sure nothing is leaking, and I don’t think it is.

We went to a supermarket down the road to get dinner stuff. When I put my basket on the check stand, the checker just stared at me. I guess that was her saying she doesn’t unload it, so I started unloading it, and she proceeded to scan. Before heading back to the house to eat, we went down the road to fill up with gas again.

Travel Log: Day 264 (3/18), South Africa

I slept like garbage last night, 41 sleep score, from being exhausted and thinking about what I might have done to the undercarriage of the car. It didn’t help that we had to wake up at 4am to get out the door by 445am.

I kept having dreams that BC was a little baby, and I was supposed to carry him places in a grocery bag, but I kept forgetting him and JC constantly had to save the day by remembering him. Maybe that has nothing to do with the car, but it registered in my consciousness that way.

Game Drive

We made it to the game drive without any trouble between the front gate open time and our game drive time. There was someone there early to let us in the gate. Our ride was a big open air vehicle that has 8-10 rows, and there were maybe 15 of us total. The guide was named Simnee, and he was funny and spoke good english. He stuck to mostly the same roads we drove on yesterday, and for the first 15 minutes or so we saw zero animals. In total the game drive was a bust and we saw less animals, less spectacularly than we saw in our car. We did however see a Rino off in the distance, and a super baby elephant, which we wouldn’t have seen on our own probably.

After the game drive we went out in our car again. We had great luck this time too and caught this up close show of two elephants at a water hole. I have video of one spraying itself down which was cool.

Return To Knysna

At about 11am we lost our steam and left. We started driving back the opposite way of the creepy drive from yesterday. It was a good move because the drive was on a much better highway. It cost us 20km but we saved time because of higher speeds. After almost three hours in the car, with 1.5 hours remaining, we rashly pulled off the road to a coffee sign.

It was the best move we could have made because not only did we get coffee, but lunch too and it was all really good. AC and I had burgers, BC and toasted ham and cheese, JC an egg and cheese sandwich. The place was empty except for us, the person who took our order was friendly, and the bathrooms were clean. It was the perfect recovery on a long drive, and I got to skip driving in a rain storm.

Reassessing Car Damage

The car ran great all the way home, acting as if nothing had happened to it. I started to lift out of the conclusion that I had done everything I saw on the underside of the car. Rather than just tell Hertz “everything you see under the car, I did that…”, I’m going to just let them discover and identity any new damage. If they tell me they found stuff under the car, I will then tell them that yes I bottomed it out.

For example the paint scratches on the under-front of the bumper; I don’t think I did that because I never nose-dove the car into the ground. Also one dent on the bottom trim of the driver’s door I can just make out in my pre-rental pictures. At this point I have no idea what I did, or what some previous renter did.

We were all relieved to get back to our temporary home in Knysna. JC and I had drinks while the kids did bonus screen time. We’re all going to bed early tonight.

Travel Log: Day 265 (3/19), South Africa

Another milestone today showing our time ticking down on this year. We will only have double digit days remaining after today.

We started school late, at 9am, because we let the kids sleep in. Despite having drinks last night, I got an 86 sleep score just from sheer exhaustion after our trip to Addo.

I went to the gym around 10:30 and it seems to be a good time to go because it wasn’t very busy. Today was legs but I didn’t lift too hard since I was still sore. I also got in some core exercises.

I took a nap in the afternoon and then we went to the waterfront area, but we drove this time. We all agreed it is so nice having a car and being insulated from all the crap on the walk to the waterfront. We went to shops, and I found a hat that I might buy. JC bought earrings, BC bought a little notebook, and AC bought something.

Claude and Spanish

Through the day I got in a lot of Duolingo, some Dreaming Spanish, and then in the evening I wanted to start studying the set of phrases that Claude made for me. It has real world phrases we’ll need, many of which I could come up with, but would take too long in the moment of a conversation. I want to have them practiced for immediate recall and speaking muscle memory.

As I started in on that, I talked to Claude about my idea to have the prompt be a Spanish phrase said to me, as if a server or other people who we will encounter are asking the questions. It lead to a prototype that Claude made for an app to do that, and that then lead to a spec file to feed to Claude Code for a better version of the app. It took Claude Code twenty minutes or so to build, and I have been adding other required things to my environment like node and home brew. I should be able to try it a little later.

The capabilities of Claude are blowing me away. This app would have taken my team and I several weeks to build. Granted that’s a slower timeline because of government overhead. Even if I were working alone at home, it would have taken me a few weeks probably.

Travel Log: Day 266 (3/20), South Africa

Gym

I went to the gym today after math, and couldn’t find a parking spot. Even after circling through twice I couldn’t find a spot. Something was going on with one of those businesses, maybe the gym itself. I gave up and drove home, and then went back just after 10am with no issue finding parking.

The front desk chick and I talked quite a bit. I asked if she was there every day and she said that yeah she worked 45 hours through the week and then 4 more on Saturday. She asked if I had family in the area, I think wondering why I’m there. I told her that no, we were just visiting and that we came from Sri Lanka. She wanted to know what I think of Knysna and I was able to answer honestly that I love it here. In Sri Lanka I would have to dance around that question and focus on the good things. We got interrupted at that point by some people who needed her, so I went and worked out.

On the way out she asked if I was coming back tomorrow (Saturday). I told her that I would be there, and I typically just run. I asked if it was busy on Saturday, and she said not really. They did however have a special event going on at 10am this Saturday. It was called something like the massacre hour, where pairs of teammates have to do 600 body weight reps between them in the hour. She said I could do it and asked if I had anyone who could be my partner. I said yeah my wife, but that I couldn’t do it (i.e. I would physically die doing it).

I asked her if she thought we were crazy to stay in the garden route area the whole time. She suggested several things, some in the garden route, but strongly suggested going to Cape Town. We’re going to try a beach she suggested tomorrow.

Claude Code

Through the day I finished working through, or having Claude Code work through the Spanish learning app. It turned out really nice and I deployed it to this blog. I committed it to github as well. This will probably become a new thing for me and the rest of the world. I could see task specific apps will being built all the time by individuals, and maybe only used by those individuals. I would have never been interested enough in having this app to put in the weeks of effort to build it. When the bar is lowered to just a few hours, I will create all sorts of things.

The Heads and FAC

In the afternoon we went to The Heads again, and the skies were clear so we could actually see it. We then went to Coney Glen Beach again to get some sun and let the kids burn some energy.

FAC followed with drinks, screen time, and my movie pick. I picked Poltergeist and it was a far more boring movie than I remembered. I guess I still remember it as scary because the last time I saw it I was probably ten years old.

Travel Log: Day 267 (3/21)

I slept really good last night despite drinking, an 84 sleep score. JC and I had coffee and then I went to the gym just after 8am. That was a pretty good time to hit the gym it turned out. The treadmills were full but after I was done stretching they opened up. The whole time I was running there was either one or two treadmills open. I learned the front desk girl’s name is Kylie.

In the afternoon I did Duo and Dreaming Spanish, and took a nap somewhere in there.

JC and I had Saturday drinks, and then we watched a couple things on Netflix with the kids.

Travel Log: Day 268 (3/22)

Today I finalized and submitted the chase travel delay reimbursement. The process for that was pretty simple, and I’m relatively confident we’ll get most of the submitted expenses reimbursed. I feel like this is a can’t lose situation though, because even if we get $0 from that, we still got a mini stay in Seychelles for the money.

I got in the usual amount of Duo and Dreaming Spanish today, which has been averaging around 1.5 hours between the two. After that I worked with Claude to modify the spanish-trainer app to support Portuguese as well. I literally only said “modify the app to also support Portuguese (Portugal) in addition to Spanish”. Just from that prompt it went off and made modifications that were perfect, giving the choice in the UI between Spanish and Portuguese and modifying everything under the hood for that.

I asked for a couple enhancements, one to show the english phrase for the “you could respond” hint, and another to allow that same phrase to be played to hear proper pronunciation. Claude quickly nailed those new features, and then I generated the audio files for all of the Portuguese and the response phrases. I had to go to ElevenLabs and subscribe to the basic level ($5) to get enough credits to produce all of the audio. Now we have a great tool for getting some Portuguese phrases memorized.

For dinner we went to the restaurant Dry Dock, and Jesus it was good. I had hake and calamari which was delicious. JC and AC had some sushi, and BC had fried fish. This place is upscale in food quality and it only cost $43.78, and a $5.84 tip.