When I was a young girl, I pored over back issues of National Geographic, devouring the photos in wide-eyed amazement. There was so much of the world to see, so many places that piqued my curiosity about the world—wanderlust was churning inside me before I was old enough to even understand what such a feeling was. All I knew that adventure was calling and I needed to answer it. Leading a trip to the Pantanal region of Brazil was exactly the kind of adventure I love to share with other wildlife photographers – the kind of trip that has you calculating how to change your flights and stay longer, even though you’re barely midway through your stay. 
 
The Pantanal region is home to approximately 2500 plants, 655 bird species, and 159 mammals, but the Pantanal Big Five are the most well-known: the giant river otter, giant anteater, maned wolf, tapir, and the most famous of them all, the jaguar.  While these big five reign supreme, the Pantanal, being the world’s largest wetlands—20 times larger than the Everglades—is teeming with subjects to photograph at every turn. It is to the Americas what the Serengeti is to Africa: a wildlife photographer’s paradise.

The jaguar is the largest cat in the Americas and the third-largest cat in the world. The Pantanal subspecies of jaguar is the largest and the heaviest of all the populations, nearly double the size of those found in Central America. Their deep chests, stocky bodies, and large heads give this predator a massive presence, a signal to every creature roaming the area that the jaguar is at the top of the food chain in this ecosystem. 
 
Every aspect of the trip to Brazil’s Pantanal is adventurous in its own way. The way into the region, the Transpantaniera, is a long and primitive road that feels more like we’re overlanding to a secret spot than we are traveling a road that has carried thousands of other travelers to the famous Pantanal region. It isn’t just our tracks using this roadway, either. The amalgamation of jaguar, crab-eating fox, and tapir tracks tells me this is an animal superhighway and this drive to our destination doubles as a sort of game drive safari, too.

Indeed, we didn’t have to wait for our first boat outings to see and photograph some of Brazil’s best wildlife. Greater rhea, southern screamers, coatis, nesting jabirus, roseate spoonbills, and caiman line the road like a welcome committee, practically begging you to stop every kilometer or two and give them the attention of your lens. Even a yellow anaconda, rarely seen by visitors, decided to cross the road in time for us to get a good glimpse. The Ypé trees, which only bloom for two weeks of the year, show off their vibrant pink flowers along the back walls of the fields. 
 
At our stop for the night, about halfway down this storied road, we enjoyed our first rendezvous with the giant river otters. These characters aren’t like our dainty little water weasels here in the United States. Rather, they earn their status in the “big five” by hauling around a body nearly six feet (I.8m) in length and weighing anywhere from 75-90 pounds (35-41kg).

Habitat destruction and historic levels of poaching in past years have landed this dense-furred and web-footed predator on the global list of threatened species. We had many encounters with these playful and social creatures, indicating that while still a species of concern, this is one species whose numbers, thankfully, are finally on the rise. 
 
While we saw hundreds ofcaiman on the drive to our first lodge, the boat outing was our first foray into photographing them in the water. There are 10 million (yes, 10 million!) jacaré caiman (this species was split from the speckled caiman some time ago and is specific to this unique region) inside the Patanal. It seemed like we could see dozens of caiman at every turn, not to mention the ones exceptional at hiding in plain sight!   
 
The caiman were everywhere, though that wasn’t always the case. For almost the entirety of the 19th century, caiman were hunted by the millions in order to meet the worldwide demand for crocodile shoes, decimating what was left of their population. Even as recently as the 1980s, over a million caiman a year were hunted for their skins. But the 1990s brought legislation to help manage their numbers a bit better, and now the caiman is one predator even the visitor on the shortest of trips to the area will see in abundance.

As part of the Alligatoridae family, these crocodilians are built for hunting on the down-low, with slow and stealthy movements that barely stir the water. Their eyes and nostrils hover just above the water line, allowing them to see and breathe while the rest of their body hides beneath the surface of the tannin-rich waters of the Rio Claro. Special flaps seal off their nostrils, throat, and ears to keep water out when they go underwater, and their eyelids are protected with a transparent eyelid designed for them to thrive in this ecosystem. The dark water makes for brilliant low-key images of the fierce predators, and pairing it with golden hour meant we could showcase their famously marbled eyes in our photography, too.  
 
Despite being one of the smaller crocodilians, the jacaré caiman is a predator to be feared if you’re a smaller mammal, bird, or fish living in the Pantanal. They eat everything from the cute capybaras to wading herons, and of course love it when an unsuspecting piranha swims near enough to almost fall directly into their mouths (that happens more often than you think!).

Arriving the next day at our home base for most of the remaining part of the trip is when the real show began. The drive into our lodge shows off one of the more unique features in this area, a landscape dotted with concrete-hard termite mounds so uniform in height, shape, and color they could easily be mistaken for field of tombstones. As the fields fade into forest, we arrive at our lodge with a warm welcome and a view of dozens of those adorable capybaras who hang out in the area. 
 
One wouldn’t think seeing the world’s largest rodent hanging out at your hotel is a good thing, but when that rodent is the patient, quiet, and completely adorable capybara, you can’t help but smile when you see them. Every morning and night, they parade to and fro in single file; it’s the world’s most stoic animal parade. There are always a few stragglers, though, a calculated and strategic decision by this species. The capybara is another welcome food source for the jaguar, and these few capybara have unselfishly volunteered to stay back a little bit in case a jaguar has been stalking the herd and is looking for an isolated animal for their meal. They have volunteered to sacrifice their lives for the benefit of the herd. 

Mornings start with the raucouschaco chachalacas and southern crested caracara, while evenings end with a scolding from the world’s largest parrot, the hyacinth macaw. For the next five days, we are a hearty group of wildlife photographers venturing out before sunrise and coming in right on the heels of what are quite possibly some of the most majestic and color-rich sunsets I’ve ever seen. With our group we have a local biologist naturalist and two experienced boatmen. Between them, they know and understand which territories are held by what jaguar, and their daily monitoring of jaguar activity means we see upward of 15-20 sightings some days. 

While caiman are a predator to be feared, there is no predator feared more than the jaguar in this area. Caiman are their preferred food, despite the amount of energy and depth of strategy the jaguar must employ to enjoy their meal. In fact, jaguars are the only cat whose millions of years of biological evolution has designed them for eating large reptiles like the caiman. We saw this on our first day, with a spectacular showing by the individual that the Jaguar ID Project calls Saseka.  
 
There are two skills that the jaguar and a good wildlife photographer have in common: patience and observing the minutiae. I believe firmly that no skill in wildlife photography is more important than being a better naturalist.It’s the skill that differentiates the “good” from the “great.” Even in a location as abundant with wildlife as the Pantanal, finding your subject, like the jaguars, takes more than just a boat ride on a lovely river and saddling up next to a perfectly posed cat. 

You can’t photograph your subject if you can’t find your subject. Sure, you can take your chances that you’ll stumble upon a subject doing something amazing in front of your lens, but you’re more likely to have many more opportunities and better wildlife encounters with even the most elementary knowledge of what your subject eats, communicates, and prefers for habitat.  
 
One can read about many of these things, but it’s the time spent in the field patiently watching and waiting that will help take your photography to the next level. On several occasions, we sat in our boats for considerable time after others had left, and that patience paid off in the form of photographing a newly born cub who couldn’t decide if she should try to swim with mom or not. 

Saseka, the pouncing jaguar, is clearly a master at both patience and observation. For nearly an hour, she sat concealed by dry vines on the clay-colored bank of the river, watching the handful of nearbycaiman slightly move back and forth all within a few feet of one another. Out of nowhere, and without even the slightest of hints it was coming, the powerful huntress launched herself out of the foliage and into the fray, landing on a caiman that never saw her coming. 
 
For his part, the caiman skillfully dragged the jaguar under the water, forcing her to struggle with him. Jaguars are more than comfortable in the water, but the caiman knows he can drown this cat to save his life, and he spends nearly a full minute attempting to do just that. After watching the surface of the water swirl above them, Saseka finally pops up out of the water gasping for breath as she scampers back up the river bankand out of harm’s way as quickly as possible.

When the adrenaline slows for us all, we pass the almost-eaten caiman on our way down a small channel. He has survived another morning. His head is bloody, but unbowed.  
 
Another half an hour passes when we turn around to exit the channel and stumble upon Saseka once again. This time, the caiman is firmly in the grip of her jaws and stands no chance of surviving the jaguar’s powerful bite, which averages around 1,500 pounds of pressure per square inch - almost double the bite strength of the tiger. 
Watching a jaguar drag her hard-earned meal up a bank and into the reeds and rafts of floating hyacinths is nothing short of extraordinary—it’s not every day, even as a full-time wildlife photographer—that one witnesses a predator taking down another predator in such a swift and calculated manner.

The rest of our time in the north Pantanal is punctuated with so many jaguar sightings that our group often begins to lose count of how many times we’ve seen the large cats that day. “Are we up to 12 or 13?” someone would ask only to hear a response like, “I think it’s actually 15 now.”  
 
At one point, trying to cross the river from one jaguar sighting to another, we stumble upon a jaguar in between. David, one of the guests on this trip jokes about how many jaguars we see as we are moving to other likely locations, quipping “Darn jaguars keep getting in our way!”

Our last stop of the trip takes us out of the aquatic heartland and back down the Transpantaneria. Just like the drive into the region, the drive out features myriad wildlife, including brown brocket deer, marsh deer, coati, and crab-eating fox. Arrival at our last lodge and the change of habitat signifies that the last few outings of this incredible trip are nearly over. This time, however, more safari-style in land-based vehicles. 
 
This part of the Pantanal, the Cerrado (grassland) habitat, is its own new mystery to unfold. Here, we see one of the most interesting parts of the Pantanal as a whole - the coming together of the Cerrado, the desert, and the wetland. Where else will you see a 10-foot cactus sitting at the base of a palm tree and next to a hardwood tree? It’s this intriguing combination that makes the Pantanal region such a fascinating biodiverse area to begin with.

In this area, jaguars are far sparser. This is no national park trip in the United States, where the animals are roadside and one merely has to take a few steps out of their car to make a photograph. No, the Pantanal wants you to work for it, at least a little. 
 
With our guide, a veterinarian and jaguar researcher for the area, our naturalist skills become even more important. While we see jaguar, anteater, and tapir tracks virtually everywhere we look, determining how recently they were put down can be an additional challenge. Locating scat, however, provides a better insight into how much time has passed since a jaguar came through.

Then we see her, the matriarch of this jaguar population, known to researchers as Nina. About 8 or 9 years old now, Nina is one of the very few jaguars here who managed to avoid being poached or hunted by the nearby ranchers at the height of the jaguar-rancher conflict. Jaguars have no particular breeding season - they mate whenever the female signals she is ready. Nina helped repopulate the area with her more frequent breeding while younger, resulting in a much bigger population than existed just a handful of years ago.  
 
The second time we see Nina, she is emitting a call to her mate, a male who only recently established his presence in this territory, telling him she is ready to start the breeding rituals again. She continues to make these calls until we leave the lodge two days later, and our guide there lets us know while we’re on our flights home that her efforts were successful, and we can expect a new cub from Nina sometime in late February of 2025! 

This trip is what comes to mind when people ask me what it’s like to be a full-time wildlife photographer—the perfect trip for anyone who hoped to one day land an assignment with or be published in National Geographic, just like I did as a kid. The days are brimming with photography opportunities all playing out mere feet in front of you with a background soundtrack of kingfishers and parakeets filling the air and kiskadees chiming in every now and then with their staccato-like whines. Neotropical cormorants and anhingasadorn the leafless treetops like a spread of holiday ornaments, and the sun scenes are so poetically vibrant, it feels like the only thing missing from this experience is the classic sound of Sir David Attenborough narrating everything as it unfolds.