Been to the Arava Valley, Dead Sea area? That’s the arid strip that has Israel on its west and Jordan on the east side. That’s where you’d have to go to see this Blue-Spotted Arab Butterfly.

I went there. I took the Israel train to the Beer’sheva University station and caught a bus for a nearly 2 hour drive down a gently descending landscape, to Ein Gedi.

Blue-Spotted Arabs were why I went there. They looked so different, so exotic.

I stayed in the SPNI Ein Gedi guest quarters. Didn’t have a rental car, and glad of that, for the bus ride from the train station passed hundreds of homes whose Bedouin residents probably . . .

Here we go again. Jeff? Why don’t you share images of this butterfly that are more easily seen? Well, Elvira, they prefer rock strewn habitat, and each and every time you attempt to cross over the rock to exercise your Macro- lens, they would 23 skidoo!

They were mostly seen along the ‘walls’ lining Wadis (bone dry riverbeds) and that was a crapshoot, for the wadis sported signs Warning!!! all to not enter the wadi, for should a snap! storm hit, those wadis suffer surges of water of incredible ferocity. I’m here with you, so good, there were no such that day.

Jeff