The emperors are really something special.
The celebrities of Antarctica are funny, magnificent and interesting, and they didn't disappoint.
It's unlike any experience you could ever have.
There are so few places you can go and see emper penguins in the wild.
Here you actually see the breeding colony in Antarctica where they're supposed to be.
Every year for the emper penguin trip we set up a whole camp by the colony, about a mile
or two away so that we're not going to disturb them.
We bring up tents, we bring in chefs so that you can live there for a couple of nights
and just watch that colony.
We make sure we take nothing there that could interfere with the penguins and when we go
out we bring everything away.
It's their environment, that's their life so we want to leave it for them pure and pristine.
Remember walking out those two kilometers and seeing our first penguins and it was really
something.
They seem to appreciate us being there, they come over, they look at you.
Every element of interfacing with these penguins is just a delight.
It was really a fabulous experience.
And I love here very much.
Here they're so peaceful, so quiet, you recharge, you get more energy.
On the colony there will be spots where the birds are jumping into the water.
You get that glimpse of them in their real environment.
You see these things snaking by at ferocious speed and they come rocketing out to land
on the edge of the ice crack.
This is a first, they've been to a lot of places in the world but this just about beats
them all.
They disappear, it's very silent suddenly but there's interest on the edge of the colony
and they all look in and then suddenly there's these explosions of water and they come flying
out.
Their whole life story is one of the most special life stories of any bird in the world.
We're packing out to go back to Cannes but I don't want to go, I want to stay, it's
very sad.
This has been the most unique experience I've had.
Last morning before we left we had about an hour and a half to just kind of say goodbye
to the penguins.
So we just kind of slowly walked away from the colony and two adults, emperors, followed
us.
We stopped, they stopped, for two kilometers they were right alongside us, following us
all the way back to camp and it's hard to really understand what was going on but they
clearly wanted to be there with us and it felt like a really fitting farewell to this
wonderful experience.
And I won't forget.
