A Look Back at 2016
2016 turned out to be my busiest year to date. I flew around 125,000 miles this year, and there was a period of almost 4 months where I didn't have a single free night at home - from early January to late April I was either at work or out of town every single night. That was exhausting. As a consequence of that, this isn't going to be your typical year-in-review type post. Instead, it's more of a sneak preview of things to come. I've just now finished post-processing all the photos that piled up and created a huge backlog, so I'll start rolling them out on this site over the coming weeks.
I started out the year with a trip to Myanmar, which I had never been to before. Yangon had a few interesting temples and terrible traffic. Bagan was pretty amazing - the hot air balloon flight over the complex was spectacular. But the return trip home was pretty horrible. I had to delay my return flight by two days because of a massive snowstorm that hit the DC area - although two extra days in Bangkok is never a bad thing. I started to come down with the flu right at the start of my Tokyo-Dulles flight, so 14 hours in an airplane seat with the chills was pretty miserable. And when I finally landed, I was greeted with a snow drift burying the entire front end of my car in Dulles long term parking. Awesome!
The year got better after that little speedbump. February was Carnival season - I've decided to try to go to Carnival in a different country every year. This year I headed to Colombia. After a few days in Medellin, I hopped on a short flight to Barranquilla - it's an industrial city that really doesn't have much going on for most of the year. But in February, it hosts one of the largest Carnival celebrations in the world (second largest in the world, only behind Rio, according to several random internet sources).
Later in the month, I headed to the Dominican Republic for Carnival, Round 2. The great thing about the Dominican Republic is that their Carnival celebrations aren't tied to Lent. La Vega holds Carnival parades every Sunday in February, so as long as my work schedule cooperates it can be possible to attend both. From the Dominican Republic, I flew straight to Costa Rica to meet up with my parents and some family friends for a week on the Atlantic Coast in Puerto Viejo. My first time in Costa Rica back in 2011, I technically saw a sloth - it was essentially a brown blob way up in the trees. This time I had a much more up-close encounter (at night in the hotel parking lot of all places). Very cool.
In March I headed to Valencia, Spain for the Las Fallas festival. Never heard of Las Fallas? Neither had I. This was one of those trips that was inspired by a single image that I saw in some random top 10 article on HuffPost or Buzzfeed, which led to a Google Image Search, which led to booking flights. Not the first time that's happened... Las Fallas is held every March, and it consists of teams building incredible papier-mache sculptures that can be several stories tall. Vibrant colors, some raunchy scenes, bullfights, and plenty of political satire. And at the end of the festival at midnight, they burn everything to the ground. Literally. And then the planning begins for the next year. It's one of the coolest things I've seen, and I've already got my 2017 trip booked to see what they come up with this year.
March also involved a trip to L.A. for WonderCon, my consolation prize for not being able to get Comic-Con tickets four years in a row. Then it was off the Thailand in April for Songkran, which is basically a 3-day drunken waterfight in the streets of Bangkok.
In May/June I went on another trip with my parents and family friends, this time to Peru and Ecuador. Saw Machu Picchu, which means I've been to six of the seven wonders - Taj Mahal is the only one left. Then after a couple days in Quito, we got on a boat to cruise around the Galapagos for four nights. The wildlife in the Galapagos did not disappoint. You can't see all of the Galapagos Big 15 in just four days, since some animals only exist on certain islands that are too spread out. But we saw all three types of boobies, the giant tortoises, and some close encounters with Galapagos Albatross. We missed out on the penguins and flamingos, which we knew we weren't going to see based on the itinerary.
The second half of the year was much more relaxed. I went to England for a week for Star Wars Celebration Europe and a mini road trip through southwest England. All the buzz was about Rogue One (which absolutely delivered). The level of cosplay seemed to be noticeably less than the Anaheim convention the previous year - not sure if that's just a European thing or if the increased security had anything to do with it (the Nice attack occurred the night before the convention). August had me going to Seoul for work. No exciting photos from that trip since I was either working or sleeping the entire time, and after four times in Seoul my desire to get out and go sightseeing has waned a bit. I would have liked to have hit the fish market in the early morning, but since I have to abide by a curfew while I'm there for work, I wouldn't have been able to get there early enough. Oh well.
After returning from Korea, I didn't go anywhere for 3 months. I took that time to teach myself web design and re-design this website from a slow, bloated Wordpress theme to what you're looking at currently. It still might not be great, but I think it's a vast improvement over the Wordpress version and I get the personal satisfaction of knowing I coded this all myself (with the help of the Boostrap 4 framework and Photoswipe). Then in December, it was off to Austria for Christmas markets, gluhwein, and Krampus runs. I finished off the year with an incredible display of Christmas lights, courtesy of the Washington D.C. LDS temple up in Silver Spring, Maryland. I've been living out here for 8 years and had never gone before, but I might make it annual tradition going forward.
So what's in store for 2017? I'm already booked to go to Italy for Carnevale in Venice, followed by a return trip to Valencia for Las Fallas. Tickets are bought for both WonderCon (in Anaheim this time instead of downtown Los Angeles) and Star Wars Celebration Orlando. And I'm hoping to hit at least one of either Morocco or India, if not both. The highlight of the year will undoubtedly be the Tanzania/Kenya safari with my parents in August.
As always, stay tuned for future updates. Over the next couple months I'll be rolling out full galleries of all the trips that are previewed here.
Shane Hawke
