diff --git a/CHANGES.md b/CHANGES.md
index e5afc31c..8cd9bdfb 100644
--- a/CHANGES.md
+++ b/CHANGES.md
@@ -1,4 +1,8 @@
 
+# 6.2.9 (2023-12-21)
+
+* fix AWS endpoint credential for STAC `fetch` function, using same defaults as GDAL vsis3 configuration
+
 # 6.2.8 (2023-12-11)
 
 * apply `discrete` colormap when the provided colormap does not have 256 values
diff --git a/rio_tiler/io/base.py b/rio_tiler/io/base.py
index 5e98bfea..4123e995 100644
--- a/rio_tiler/io/base.py
+++ b/rio_tiler/io/base.py
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@
 import contextlib
 import re
 import warnings
+from functools import cached_property
 from typing import Any, Dict, List, Optional, Sequence, Tuple, Type, Union
 
 import attr
@@ -43,7 +44,7 @@ class SpatialMixin:
 
     geographic_crs: CRS = attr.ib(init=False, default=WGS84_CRS)
 
-    @property
+    @cached_property
     def geographic_bounds(self) -> BBox:
         """Return dataset bounds in geographic_crs."""
         if self.crs == self.geographic_crs:
diff --git a/rio_tiler/io/stac.py b/rio_tiler/io/stac.py
index b30339b4..5a6d8f72 100644
--- a/rio_tiler/io/stac.py
+++ b/rio_tiler/io/stac.py
@@ -73,7 +73,7 @@ def aws_get_object(
 
         # AWS_S3_ENDPOINT and AWS_HTTPS are GDAL config options of vsis3 driver
         # https://gdal.org/user/virtual_file_systems.html#vsis3-aws-s3-files
-        endpoint_url = os.environ.get("AWS_S3_ENDPOINT", None)
+        endpoint_url = os.environ.get("AWS_S3_ENDPOINT", "s3.amazonaws.com")
         if endpoint_url:
             use_https = os.environ.get("AWS_HTTPS", "YES")
             if use_https.upper() in ["YES", "TRUE", "ON"]:
@@ -82,10 +82,7 @@ def aws_get_object(
             else:
                 endpoint_url = "http://" + endpoint_url
 
-        client = session.client(
-            "s3",
-            endpoint_url=endpoint_url or "s3.amazonaws.com",
-        )
+        client = session.client("s3", endpoint_url=endpoint_url)
 
     params = {"Bucket": bucket, "Key": key}
     if request_pays or os.environ.get("AWS_REQUEST_PAYER", "").lower() == "requester":