Venezuela is a highly scenic destination, and has one of the most bio-diverse butterfly faunas in the world. The tour was led by Andrew Neild, the acknowledged world expert on Venezuelan butterflies, so this promised to be an exciting trip. The maximum group size of 8 people however caused me to have strong misgivings about joining the tour, due to the potential difficulties and frustrations of photographing butterflies with so many people in restricted areas of habitat. My fears however proved to be unfounded, as although we often had to queue up to get photographs, everyone remained good natured and we all managed to see and photograph a huge number of species.

Andrew Neild was a very capable, resourceful and amicable tour leader, and was able to show us a huge variety of species, as listed at the end of this report. As well as the butterflies, we saw several attractive Hawkmoths and Silkmoths.

While the rest of the group were busy taking photographs, Andrew often wandered about, using a long-poled net to capture canopy dwelling species, some of which were kept cool in papers and subsequently released for photography as dusk approached. He also used tin-foil lures to attract Morphos, and rotting plantains to attract most of the Caligo and Archaeoprepona seen. Several Heraclides, Diaethria, Marpesia and Perisama were attracted to human urine. Many other species were seen mud-puddling, including  about 20 Melete by a stream, about 40 Phoebis around a discarded beer bottle, and another group of about 30 mixed Pieridae that had been attracted to a bright yellow fallen leaf, which they had presumably mistaken for a settled Phoebis.

About a dozen new butterfly sub-species, and 4 full species previously unknown to science were captured by Andrew ( he sought our consent to undertake scientific collecting before the tour began ).

Birds seen included a variety of hummingbirds, eagles, macaws, nightjars and tanagers. The only mammals we saw alive were squirrels, but we found very fresh pug marks of panther. There were many beautiful dragonflies, damselflies and "helicopters". We came across several snakes : one evening Andrew had a fright when one slithered into his room - fortunately it turned out to be a harmless boa constrictor. Whilst on foot in the savannah of the Gran Sabana we had a very close encounter with a large rattlesnake.

The first area we visited was cloudforest at Rio Frio, in the Andes, near the Colombian border. The scenery was very attractive in certain places. The journey to Rio Frio from our hotel at San Cristobal took about 2 hours.  We explored the little used rough road that led alongside the river, and crossed a bridge to reach grassy tracks at higher altitudes. We also explored a track called the Mata Mula trail, and another called La Revancha. The next area visited was some dry forest at Imataca, where we explored along a wide dirt road which cut through the forest. We moved next to the Icabaru road, and later explored forest at Km 80.5 near El Dorado. The following day some of us elected to explore roadside forest on a steep scarp called La Escalera, while others chose to take a short break from butterflies, and walked along a river edge on the Gran Sabana plateau. The group reunited the following day, when we visited Jasper Falls. Finally we took a spectacular flight over the tepuys to Canaima, where we got good views of the world's largest moth Thysania agrippina, resting on a tree trunk. We estimated it's wingspan to be about 11 inches.

Before departing for England we each nominated our favourite species of the trip. The candidates included an immaculate male Morpho rhetenor which posed with it's glorious blue wings wide open one afternoon, Hamadryas laodamia, Pterourus zagreus, Dryas julia, Haetera piera, Phoebis philea, Arcas imperialis, Agrias claudina, and such glories as an Archaeoprepona demophoon that sat with it's deep blue-green banded wings half open in full sunshine on a leaf a metre in front of me. One of the most delightful finds was a mating pair of the lovely black, red and white Amarynthis meneria basking with wings spread under a Heliconia leaf.

Other candidates included the stunning Nessaea batesii, black, with deep orange and sky-blue wing patches, and a beautiful leaf-green underside; and the gorgeous fresh Morpho hecuba that cruised along a track at eye-level casually flicking its wings in the sunshine. The Red Daggerwing Marpesia petreus with it's wonderfully sculpted bright red-orange wings was another favourite. Another very strong contender was a freshly emerged Caligo atreus which came down to banana bait, and spread open it's deep purple and orange wings before my very privileged eyes.

How could I choose a favourite ? Well actually it was very easy - the winner for me was seen at Jasper Falls, a very beautiful place where the river at the base of the falls flows gently, ankle deep, over glistening jasper rock which has been eroded by the river to produce beautiful orange and gold patterns on the surface. In this peaceful idyllic setting, a few minutes ahead of the other group members, I discovered an amazingly beautiful butterfly, a perfect fresh Rhetus periander, it's tailed wings resplendent in the deepest, richest shade of gleaming purple. The butterfly played hide and seek with me for several minutes, dashing from sun-spot to sun-spot in the shady rainforest below the falls. In a state of great excitement I scrambled through the forest trying to relocate this fantastic winged jewel, which taunted me with rare flashes of it's fabulous wings. Then I saw it land for a moment in a tiny spot of bright sunshine, and for two brief but wonderful seconds it spread open it's wings, giving me the greatest privilege any naturalist could imagine.