The rich wetlands of the Pantanal make photography as unique an experience as the Amazon. Here’s why.
1. Vast and diverse wildlife
The Pantanal is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that contains the highest concentration of wildlife in South America. About 300 mammals, 480 reptiles, 400 fish and 1000 birds are found here. A plethora of interesting and unique subjects can be photographed, including the elusive top-cat, the jaguar, the ocelot, the giant anteater, the caiman, the giant otter, and the red-and-green macaw among many other birds and animals and even rare species of fish and flowers.
2. Landscape
Sprawled across three countries of South America, over at least 140,000 km2 , the epic river delta in the Pantanal of Brazil is bordered by the Chiquintano dry forests, the Arid Chaco dry forests, the Humid Chaco forests and the Cerrado savannahs. Consisting of semiarid woodland plants and tropical Amazonian rainforest plants, the ‘Pantanal complex’ is mostly grasslands covering the seasonally inundated regions. It is only at higher altitudes that forests occur.
3. Accessibility
We explore Pantanal by boat, by motor vehicle and on foot by turns. And because the wetlands are plain and there’s no profusion of trees, accessibility to the endemic and exotic wildlife in the Pantanal is rather high. While some parts of the Amazon cannot even be touched by humans, in the Pantanal, you can explore quite far and wide by different means. Apart from watching and photographing the wildlife of Pantanal, you will also get intimately acquainted with this pristine part of the world.
4. Visibility and Photography Opportunities
Aided by the relative openness of the habitat, it’s relatively easy to find and photograph various mammals and birds that are endemic to these wetlands. When you are here, it’s like watching a wildlife play on stage, incessantly exhilarating but as real and natural as it can get. You can see for as far as your vision reaches, in most parts of the wetlands where life exists and continues to just be. All this means that the photography opportunities are immense.
