And now for the main event!
Tuesday 18 July
The pick up was really smooth – Iceland really has nailed touristing. The sad thing was that cafés don’t open until 8am and I needed to wait at the bus stop from 8am. My bus arrived at 0815 and took me and two other women (french and french Canadian) to the dive shop at Arctic Adventures headquarters on the outskirts of town. I finally met Mattia after corresponding via email a few months ago.
I am doing a 2-day Dry Suit Diving course (with Arctic Adventures) to enable me to scuba dive in one of the most impressive dive sites in the world on the second day… more on that later.
The course was pricey at £530 but the promise of this particular adventure was enough to get me in the cold, cold water after I had avoided it for so long.
Firstly we had an introductory video to watch and then Mattia talked us through the equipment and the processes before we headed to an amazing (standard for Iceland) pool where we were taught some drills. An interesting fact was that in order to feel perfectly at ease in water long-term and not gain or lose heat, it needs to be approximately 34° celcius.
The pool dive was definitely useful familiarisation as the neck seal felt very tight and I had to get used to it so that I didn’t feel like my breathing was restricted. I felt myself relaxing into the experience of wearing the dry suit quite quickly and I enjoyed learning the new skills to deal with potential issues underwater. I was extremely lucky as I stayed dry. The tight seals were worth it.
The strangest thing about the pool dive was coming out of the dry suit and having a dry swimming costume underneath!
We grabbed lunch and snacks at Bonus and then drove to Kleifarvatn Lake for our first dry suit dive. The lake is stunning and is even prettier in July as it is surrounded by the (highly controversial invasive) lupins.
I have dived in a semi dry suit once before in the UK when the water was 10 degrees and it was pretty horrendous.
The lake is 12 degrees and I was wearing a swimming costume, undersuit and dry suit plus 7mm hood and gloves. I was absolutely warm enough for this dive and I have thermals in reserve for the really cold dive tomorrow.
The dive itself was so special! One of my favourite dives ever (and I’m genuinely surprised to say that about a cold water dive!). The lake is geothermally active (that does not mean warm water evidently) and in certain patches there are constant streams of sulphur bubbles being released from the lake bed. I was told that it wouldn’t really be warm but I lay down across some of the bubble streams and watched the ones in front of me. Fully mesmerising and as I was laying there I felt so grateful to be able to go on this dive.
Back in Reykjavik I had plenty of time to get my stuff together ready for Day 2 and then headed to the pool next door to the hostel to unwind the Icelandic way. This local pool costs 1210kr (£7.11) for a one off ticket or 5560kr (£32.70) for ten sessions. The pool is fantastic. Better than most UK spas I’ve been to! I spent a long time in one of the main hot tubs next to the outdoor heated pool and I also spent some time in the steam room and gave the cold pool a go a couple of times. I’m feeling achy after diving today so hopefully this helps.
After the spa evening, at about 10pm, I headed to a pub I had been recommended as a nice and cheap hamburger joint. Vitabar was a good tip, I had a cheeseburger with pineapple and a 500ml Thule beer for 2850kr (£16.76). I liked the local atmosphere, it felt quite like a pub at a British seaside town (for some reason).
Wednesday 19 July
The day I’ve been waiting for and effectively the reason I’m back in Iceland again for a week…. Diving Silfra Fissure – one of the top dive sites in the world, and the only reason I was willing to finally do my dry suit course!!
Silfra Fissure is in Thingvellir National Park, a UNESCO world heritage site and a tourist hotspot of Iceland.
The dive site is the only place in the world where you can dive between tectonic plates – Silfra is sited between the North American and Eurasian plates. The fissure was created during earthquakes in 1789 along with other fissures, however this one breached through into an underwater spring carrying meltwater from the Langjökull glacier which takes 50-70 years to filter through the lava. The filtration makes it some of the clearest water on earth and visibility can exceed 100m, almost unheard of. The downside worth mentioning is that the water is 2° Celsius which is pretty much the coldest diving you can do. The rental dry suits were neoprene with wet suit gloves and hood. So your hands and head get wet and it’s cold!!!!!!!!
The journey there was seamless and we arrived to meet our new instructor Kira. She was really excellent, helping the others meticulously place extra elastic bands to make sure their suits didn’t leak today. We also had different Buoyancy Control Devices today – technical wings rather than the usual jackets – and Kira is a technical diving instructor so it was nice to hear more about that incredible field.
When we were kitted up we undertook the notorious “Silfra walk” – 150m fully kitted up to the entry point. During the buoyancy check it turned out that I had ended up with WAY too much weight in the kit changeover so it took a while to rejig everything and I ended up with an annoying lead weight belt for the dive, not to mention the annoyance of doing that trudge with too much weight!!
The dive depth profile is really variable and you end up changing depth significantly throughout the 40 minute dive. At two points you have to practically surface to get over the rocks and then the bottom falls away to 20-40m again on the other side.
I had an absolutely wonderful experience. So memorable!! It was really cold but only my hands suffered. The visibility was incredible – distance never seemed to be the limiting factor – I could always see into the distance until the view was blocked by rocks. Amazing!
Currently there is also a wonderful, beautiful neon green blooming algae that grows in long thin threads called Troll’s Hair. It’s spectacular and really added to the scene.
There wasn’t much of a current most of the time so it was a chilled dive in every sense of the word. At times the channel was reasonably deep and it was possible to head down and look at the piles of broken up lava from when the fissure formed. I noticed the cooler water at the bottom and found that I had a bit of ice on my regulator at one point!
Near the exit point is Baby Silfra, a relatively new channel that opened up during some large earthquakes in 2008. It’s definitely worth holding on a bit longer in the cold to see this. It’s much narrower than most of Silfra but just as steep-sided and clear.
That notorious “Silfra walk” includes the 400m return journey! It’s A way of warming up slightly after the cold dive I guess!! My hands were sooo cold but aside from that I was alright.
I can’t recommend this dive enough. I would jump at the chance of doing it again.
Wow! 👍🏻
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