As we leap into a new year, we thought we’d take a moment to look back on the year just gone, and reflect upon the journey we’re making together.
Team Mariposa is a happy family, and our guests are at the heart of what makes our collective family such a special one. We’ve shared some truly outstanding wildlife moments together this past year, with our butterfly-watching carrying us from the extremes of within the Arctic Circle to the ‘Sahara-on-sea’ desert landscape of Fuerteventura, from high in the French Alps and Hautes Pyrenees to just above sea level on the southern and eastern coasts of Spain, from the westerly reaches of the Picos de Europa to Eastern Europe in Hungary and Romania.
And that’s just for the butterflies! Among other highlights, we’ve found brilliant birds in Provence, watched whales and dolphins approach our boat mere metres from us off Madeira, marvelled at jewel-like dragonflies in Valencia, and shared an evening of intimate encounters with Brown Bears in Romania. Orchids, of course, are a major part of what we do, and we’re delighted to be the first choice for orchid-hunting holidays in Europe. At the time of writing, our flagship Orchids of Rhodes tour has just two places remaining available to book on it – not in 2026, which has been fully booked for over nine months now, but in 2027! We know why it’s popular – we have the best guides with the best site knowledge of the island, and we find more species, varieties, and hybrids than anyone else visiting the island. That’s no idle boast – our trip report details the 55 species alone we found in flower in 2025. That’s here to read on our website – as are just some of the testimonials that our guests have kindly written.
That goes for all our tours. We don’t take what we do for granted – we’re always striving to improve the service we provide. Getting the basics right is essential – nobody wants their email ignored, or their phone call unanswered – and as both guests and guides in our own right, we understand better than most what makes a holiday work, from point of enquiry to receipt of a trip report after the event. And of course, in between, a trip led by friendly, knowledgeable, and empathetic tour leaders who know where to find the wildlife we’re looking for. Getting feedback from our guests, including those generous testimonials, means we can refine what we do.
2025 has been a special year for us in other ways beyond delivering quality tours in the field for our guests – we’ve continued to grow, expanding our range of tours to offer exciting new destinations for butterflies and orchids. New destinations for 2026 include Tenerife, Crete, Sardinia, and the French Alps for orchids; and Morocco, Abruzzo, and Austria for butterflies. We’ve already got fully-booked new tours for 2027 to southern Italy for orchids, and northern Italy and Switzerland for butterflies – and watch this space, there will be more new destinations for 2027 announced in the year to come. Crucially, we don’t offer a tour unless our tour leaders have done a recce first and know the destination in question works.
Speaking of our tour leaders, they form the backbone of Team Mariposa, and we’re incredibly proud to have such a tight-knit and dedicated team working with us. That team has strengthened further this past year with four major new members joining us – legendary Spanish butterfly scientist Miguel López Munguira, renowned Italian biologist Michele Viganò, famed British naturalist and artist Brian Small, and the utterly brilliant naturalist and photographer Professor Frank Sengpiel. All four bring with them enormous knowledge, warmth, and tour-leading experience, and we’re delighted at the increased breadth and depth they bring to our guiding team. Some of you will know one or more of them already at a personal level and, if not, we’re sure you’ll be delighted to find yourself on a tour with one of them at the helm.
A glance at the tour calendar for the coming year on our website speaks volumes about how Team Mariposa is doing – all but one of 2026’s tours are already guaranteed departures, and well over half of them are already fully booked. That does mean, however, there are still a few spaces left available on some of our tours – and with their status being guaranteed departures, one can book with confidence the tour’s going ahead. Of course, should your plans change in the meantime – and we know life has a habit of throwing up surprises – you can simply cancel your booking, and we’ll refund your deposit without hesitation. It’s how we’d like to be treated, after all.
Finally, on the subject of having a good heart, we’re really pleased that all of those guaranteed departure tours mean guaranteed donations after every single one to either Butterfly Conservation Europe (BCE) or the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland (BSBI). We’re particularly proud to have been the first tour company to arrange to do so with BCE, paving the way for others to follow. Equally though, it’s important to us that we were committed to donate to BSBI after every botanical tour from day one of the Mariposa journey – we couldn’t wait a minute let alone a decade to do so. We know that these conservation charities and the superb work they do are important to our guests, and they’re important to us too.
We’ll bring this to a close by wishing you a happy new year ahead, and we hope your travels through it are safe, healthy, and filled with wildlife wonder. We’d love it if you shared some of that journey with us, either in person or simply by dropping us a line by email, phone or social media and letting us know what you’re seeing. We always love to talk wildlife!
