I Visited the Amazon Rainforest with a $15,000 Lens

I can't believe I'm saying this, but this is the Amazon rainforest. I've traveled to the most biodiverse region on half, where more species of plants and animals live than anywhere else on the planet. For the towering trees to vibrant plants, this is the Amazon rainforest. Following a short bus ride, we boarded a boat on the Tambopata River in the Peruvian Amazon. Almost immediately as we began navigating upstream, we spotted a family of capibars. I was amazed at how relaxed they were, and this was my first time seeing them out close and in the world. Capibars are the largest rodents in the world and they're highly social animals that often live in groups of 10 to 20. After a one hour boat ride, we arrived to our home for the next week, Pesada and Amazonas. Within just 10 minutes of arriving, a pair of brown-tating monkeys passed through the trees. So today we arrived to the Amazon rainforest and it has been 10 years since I was last here and the last time I was here, I was a field biologist volunteer for three months. It was absolutely incredible. So I'm extremely happy to be back. We are staying at Pesada Amazonas, which is an ecologically run by rainforest expeditions and we're here for six nights. Hello, you all right, you can come and I'm very happy to be back in the rainforest. That afternoon we headed into the rainforest with our guide Boris, who introduced us to the Peru nut tree, or as most of the world knows it, the Brazil nut. When the road is not mature, so Macau's can eat them. As we stood at the base of this incredible giant, I found myself wandering, what would it be like to be at the tops of these trees? This is the canopy tower and as soon as we arrived, the female Howla Monkey was already climbing to the top. When we reached the top ourselves, we realised the whole family was there. This evening we've come to a canopy tower and behind me there are ten Howla monkeys. Two tiny babies and it's just wild. We can see so far. We can see the river behind us. We are above the up canopy and it's just insane. During COVID, the Howla monkeys actually moved into the canopy tower and decided to make it the perfect resting spot. So rainforest expeditions had to build a new one for guests. But now it allows for truly unique opportunity to get I-level shots of these incredible primates. We had a wonderful evening at the canopy tower. That's what it's called. We had a wonderful evening at the canopy tower with the Howla monkeys. It was amazing to see them so close and they were very relaxed and we were watching us tomorrow morning. We are waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning and we're going to look for giant revotters and I am extremely excited for that. But now it's dinner time and we will definitely have an early night. This video is sponsored by Squarespace. The all-in-one platform I use to run my photography website. Squarespace has beautiful templates that are perfect for photographers and it's incredibly easy to create stunning galleries and portfolios. We also use it to promote my photography workshops and keep everything updated in one place. Plus, they're built in analytics tools. Help me understand where my audience is coming from and what's working. Head to squarespace.com slash Danny Conno-Wild to save 10% of the new purchase of the website or a domain. It is incredibly foggy this morning but we're heading to a lake and hopefully we'll find some giant revotters that we'll see. We were heading to the Oxbow Lake where family of eight giant otters live. Oxbow lakes are formed from meandering rivers that have changed course and their calm protected rotors make ideal habitats for fish. Up next is Kristrim just at the Lake east in her我在 small town. After navigating upstream and hiking through forest, we arrived at the lake where I tied a heron greeted us. We paddled out onto the water and quickly spotted the giant otters. The family was out hunting peranus. Giant otters need to eat around 4 kilograms of fish a day. And they live in matriarchia groups and the lead female who has recently given birth was currently with the cubs. It was amazing to hear the otters screaming. A sound that means back off this is my fish. The encounter was quick, but we were incredibly lucky to witness one of the otters sitting on a wooden log with its prized breakfast. Sometimes in wildlife photography you really just need a few minutes of something truly magical. And this was only day one. I'd have more chances to see the otters again later in this trip. As the sun really started to be, we spotted what's in it or as they're commonly called stink birds. As well as bats and howlam monkeys. We had an incredible encounter with seven young people. We were trying to get out of the otters and one had caught a fish and it was eating right in front of us. It was amazing. It was making loads of funny squeaking sounds and then they went off. We saw howlam monkeys and now we're heading back. We returned to Pesada and Arizona's had a hearty lunch and took the afternoon to rest. So I thought I do a little room tall. I know it's a bit odd to do a room tall when my content is about wildlife, photography and conservation, but a lot of people are actually quite curious and sometimes nervous about going somewhere such as the Amazon rainforest. It's actually very comfortable. Let me show you around. Very quickly. So here you enter through the front door. We have a little seating area, fridge, water, two very large beds in case you're sharing with a friend, a work area and a hammock and of course the bathroom with hot showers. As I walked through the wooden corridor, I saw a very familiar shape and I could hardly believe my eyes. Had I somehow brought a red scroll from Sweden? Well this is the Amazon red scroll around three times the size of the European red scroll. With an incredibly long fluffy tail. Real life Pokemon. In the afternoon we headed back out on the boat to explore the river again. We found a young Cayman resting on the riverbank and shortly after another capibara family. So this evening we had a little sunset cruise. We saw lots of cabbara. In Cayman which was really nice, had amazing eyes. But the highlight today has definitely been the river otters. I was reviewing the footage and just seeing this otter with this massive piranha splashing around that was definitely the highlight and I think it might be the highlight of this place because I'd never seen giant river otters and they are really crazy cool animals. I'm getting bitten by sand flies but I hope we're going to go soon because there's a lot of sand flies in the really itchy. I spent three months in the Peruvian Amazon 10 years ago and it makes me so incredibly happy to be back here. I'm so excited to share more of the rainforest with you in upcoming episodes. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video.