Happy New Year from us all at Mariposa Nature Tours! We hope this finds you safe and well, and looking forward to the year’s wildlife-watching ahead.
Quite a few of our tours for 2024 are either completely or very nearly fully booked now – and almost all of them are now guaranteed to run, so there’s some food for thought here on the website for anyone now planning their 2024 holidays. And until the butterfly season starts in earnest on 1April we’re continuing to offer a £50 early bird discount off the listed price of our week-long 2024 tours.
We’re already looking ahead to 2025, and putting plans and logistics in place. As anyone who’s travelled with us as individual leaders before will know, we place a lot of emphasis on being well-organised. We know that’s a quality our guests value, and one that’s central to how we operate as a wildlife tour provider.
In 2024 we’ve set aside some time to investigate some new locations for exclusive new tours that, all being well, we will run in 2025, and we’ll be in a position to announce those later this summer. And in the meantime, we’ve started to do the groundwork for the 2025 versions of existing popular tours in the Mariposa Nature Tours portfolio – a number are already available to book here on the website, and we’ll be adding more in the next few weeks. Some already have bookings!
There are also a couple of new tours that may be of interest – Madeira, Jewel of Macronesia will run for the first time in August 2024, with renowned conservationist Martin Davies making his tour leading debut for Mariposa Nature Tours. We’re very pleased indeed to have Martin join the team, and we know guests will be delighted to travel with this experienced field naturalist and leader. The tour will be searching for a plethora of Madeiran endemics, including butterflies, birds and flowers, in the spectacular surroundings of this strikingly beautiful subtropical Atlantic island.
The first of our new tours for 2025 is also now available to book – Wildflower Photography in Rhodes takes us to the extremely pleasant surroundings of the Greek island of Rhodes in the eastern Mediterranean, at the perfect time of year, in the midst of spring when the island blazes with wildflowers – countless thousands of orchids, but hundreds of further species besides. Our guests can expect fragrant endemic cyclamens and peonies, statuesque velvety Dragon Arums, swathes of anemones, sparkling Stars of Bethlehem, delicate fritillaries, to name but a few.
The scene is set, and guests will be in the very best of hands, with professional plant photographer Sarah Cuttle on hand to provide friendly assistance and guidance for all levels of photographer from enthusiastic beginner to prize-winning professional. Sarah’s a regular photographer for BBC Gardener’s World and the Royal Horticultural Society, amongst others, and her warmth and encouraging manner make her a firm favourite with photography guests. This tour is exclusive to Mariposa Nature Tours, and we’re sure it will prove popular. Not least because we’ll be staying at our favourite rural hotel on the island, a small, comfortable, family-run establishment where we’re guaranteed a warm welcome and the very finest home-cooked Greek food!
If you’ve any questions about these tours, or any others in the 2024/25 portfolio, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line. We’re only an email or a phone call away, and we’re always quick to respond. We know we like clear, helpful and timely answers to our questions, and we’re pretty sure our guests do too!
