See the universe expand when you experience real darkness in the Peruvian Amazon. Chris Naka, Atlas Obscura's Director of Video, shares photography from Expedition Amazon.      

It’s 9 PM in the Amazon rainforest, and the group gathers outside the ecolodge. Headlights on, we listen to the low rumble of howler monkeys. A cacophony of insects expands in the air like an electric synthesizer.       

Our lead biologist, Jason, leads us into the dark. Within minutes we’re enveloped by the canopy. Jason asks us to turn off our headlights to feel what it’s like to be in pitch black nature. The effect is immediate and overwhelming.     

On these hikes, which happen nightly, we see the rainforest through the narrow, shifting beam of our headlights. In the pitch black, space takes on new, exhilarating distortions. Something 20 feet away feels like five miles. We each occupy a visual bubble that's all our own. The beam of our headlight moves, and suddenly there's a slimy neotoad, a tiny butterfly, or a bioluminescent larva.

These photographs are stills from a video taken on a night hike near the Tambopata River in Peru.