highway was fantastic to watch, they had literally made well worn tracks and there were definite lines of penguins going one way or the other. Again the noise and smell was quite overwhelming. We followed a stream and walked round towards the valley where the colonies had there nests. Again some of these were literally miles from the sea and very high up. The penguins on the penguin superhighway were far to wrapped up in their own little world to even notice us and they continued on their journey with much chatter and the odd little push and peck here and there.

The valley was incredible and had been shaped by an old glacier. It sort of looked like an amphitheatre especially with the hive of activity that was all around. We climbed to a high point but didn’t go right to the top as we didn’t really want to walk through a penguin chick crèche! At this time of the year the chicks are big

enough to look after themselves while their parents go out fishing all day. So the chicks all gather round in large groups and are generally looked after by one or two adult penguins. There is much squawking and pushing and shoving as these cute little things spend their days playing and sleeping until their parents come home to feed them. It is also incredible that their parent can identify their chicks when there are so many of them, but they do and there is always much raucous behaviour to be had when either one partner or both parents return from sea.

We had around 3 hours here and each moment was a joy. At one point a Giant Petrel landed in the hope of catching a chick but the Chinstraps were having none of it and a group almost instantly gathered around it and saw it on its way. They are feisty little things once rattled and on mass would give anyone a run for their money! Rob managed to get