Swimming between continents in Silfra, Þingvellir

A very flattering photo of me in snorkelling gear.

When I told people that I was going to be snorkelling in Iceland, the first thing they asked if I had lost my mind. After all, Ice-land, right? It was going to be cold, and was I really going to jump into freezing icy water of my own accord?

Well, duh I was going to. I'd got it into my head that Iceland was going to be The Trip, and the one with the most crazy stories to tell (oh boy, I'd live to regret thinking that later. Okay not really but that's for another post!) and what better way than to go snorkelling in 3-degree water?

The night before snorkelling, I was so excited I tell you I could barely sleep.

I'm a sucker for the outdoors (how not to be when I've grown up in a concrete jungle my entire life? You always want what you can't have) and I absolutely love being outside (when it's not sweltering hot 35 degrees, ahem Singapore ahem). I love water, and I love nature, and I really love swimming when it's not in a chlorinated pool. So mermaids, rivers, oceans, natural bodies of water - sign me up!

When my tour guide, Louis, picked me up from where I was Couchsurfing (yes first Couchsurfing experience ever - check!) in the morning, I was so excited I was almost jumping. I love that there was a pick-up service - super convenient and the best thing ever for blur tourists!

After picking up a few more people along the way, we headed out to Þingvellir (pronounced TH-ing-vuh-leer, not PING!) National Park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the seat of the world's first ever parliament, and it's only 45 minutes out of Reykjavik. And driving out of the city and into the wilderness, honestly, gods and goddesses of high above, there could not be a single more perfect day.

The Silfra fissure in Þingvellir. Blue skies and bright sun, what more could you ask for?

What makes the Silfra fissure so special is that this is where the North American and Eurasian continental plates are steadily pulling apart from each other at the rate of 1cm a year. For the geography geeks, it's called rifting.

You know that scene in A Walk to Remember when Landon takes Jamie to a state border line and tells her that she's standing in two places at once? That's exactly how I felt when I was standing here looking over the Silfra fissure.

So basically, we were going to be swimming in between two continents. Continents.

How bloody awesome is that?!?!?!

Bonus points that it was a beautiful clear sunny day and there was snow on the ground, which made it all the crazier (I should probably add that the week right before I got there Iceland was hit by a pretty bad bout of weather, and when the Icelanders say it's bad, it's bad.)

My tour guide, Louis, is a guy from Namibia who went to school in South Africa and somehow wound up in Iceland. Now that is a world of change! He said that on days when the weather is too bad for regular activities, the company runs storm hikes, which show people around Iceland's baddest-of-the-badass-weather days. They take people to Search-And-Rescue operations centres and even hike through winds that are blowing past you at 10 m/s.

Thankfully, there's none of that crazy today.

Suiting up!

Once we reach Silfra, we start to suit up. I should probably say here that while the photos look sunny and glorious, it was actually -2 outside, and cold as hell.

I have to say, after having jumped into the waterfall pool at the Rha River in the Isle of Skye about a month ago, I thought I had lost most inhibition for jumping into cold water. But when I was sitting in the van getting dressed and putting on my thermal wear, even I started to have second thoughts. I was shivering just sitting in the van - never mind going in the water, it was cold enough just being here on dry land!

The suits that we wore were drysuits, which are made of a buoyant material that traps a lot of air and thus keeps the wearer warm. There were three layers to our suit - our own thermals that we brought, thermal underwear that Dive.IS provided, and the actual dry suit.

Looking short and stout like a teapot, and very professional.

Putting on a drysuit is a process. The thermal layer sits tight and snug, and it is not easy to pull on - and as if that wasn't enough, the dry suit layer is the hardest possible thing in the world to put on.

It's a one-piece suit with feet attached, and you'd think it would be like pulling on stockings except that the opening for the suit is where the shoulders are.

So you have to literally climb into your suit and pull one leg in in (this part actually takes effort because the leg of the suit refuses to cooperate) and then somehow manoeuvre your other leg, and then pull one arm through an opening, except that there's an ultra-tight rubber thingy that wraps itself around your hand and prevents water from getting into the drysuit.

You have to push your arm through this ultra-tight rubber wrap, then push your other arm through the other, and then comes the fun part of trying to put your head through the neck opening - oh, and there's another rubber wrap around your neck, too, and that's really tight, so that you have to take a breath like going underwater before someone helps you pull the neck over your head, and then once you're in it becomes really hard to breathe because the wrap is so snug around your neck.

Thankfully, putting on the suit was probably the most difficult part of the entire day, and once we're in it's actually pretty nice and warm. 

We put a little bit of soap solution on the inside of the mask to prevent them from fogging up underwater, and it's actually so cold that as we're walking from the van to the water the soap freezes up on the inside of our masks. I can't help but think, "Really, Iceland?!"

After getting the rest of our gear - hoods, mittens, and fins, it's finally time to go swimming!!!


We bite down hard on the mouthpieces of the snorkelling mask, step down the stairs that lead into the fissure, and let ourselves float in our drysuits, buoyant on the surface of the water. Snorkelling is the easiest thing - you don't even really need to know how to swim, because the drysuits do the floating for you. You breathe in and out through your mouthpiece, which feels strange for the first five seconds and then becomes as natural as breathing on land.

I turn and look face down into the water, and the world is like nothing I've ever seen before.

I know it's cheesy, but that first breath while looking into this underwater wonderland is like a breath of fresh air. The water is so clear, the water is so blue, the sunlight is dappling and the rays are filtering through the surface.

Honestly I am lost for words.

Me and my GoPro Hero 2 - love that it's waterproof!

The water is glacier melt and has been filtered through layers and layers of lava rock, so it's crystal clear (and also tastes like Evian, ha ha!). There's a thousand shades of blue and turquoise, and the rays sunlight shining through make you question whether what you're seeing is real.

It's like a dream, except it's not. It's real, you're completely immersed in it, and it's the most powerful thing to be so drawn into a moment that you can't focus on anything but how beautiful the world around you is.

I suddenly realised how much I treasured this moment - that I had the chance to come to Iceland and see this. I think it was while I was in the water and swimming that I realised for the first time just how special - not just full of stories but truly special - this trip to Iceland was going to be.

Lots of people who go to Iceland come back and say that Iceland was special and that going there changed them. In the water, right there in Silfra, floating and seeing the world around me, I think that was when I realised that Iceland was going to do that to me, too.

That was the first time I realised that I was falling in love with Iceland.

The "Cathedral" section.

When we were in the water, Louis couldn't really talk to us because of the mask. He was just guiding us along, letting us swim along, taking in the sights of the underwater world. The only sounds that I heard were those of fins slapping the water and my own breathing.

I liked that we were free to become lost in the world of water and thought.

Of course, there were moments when the dream slipped up a bit. Stupid as it sounds, I momentarily forgot to breathe out of my snorkel mouthpiece and had to 'come up' for air even though I was still breathing out of my mouthpiece above water. Louis even noticed when I did this and asked if I was doing okay - points to incredibly observant guides!



It seemed all too soon that we had to climb back out of the water - had it really been 30-40 minutes in the water already? - and we took our fins off and walked back to the vehicle. And then just for kicks, a bunch of us jumped off a cliff back into the water, screaming a little bit along the way for sound effects.

You know, because adrenaline so why not?

(Side note: seriously regretting not having done the cliff jump twice and having captured that moment on video.)

And then came the task of having to take our drysuits off, which involved a lot of tugging, pulling, hopping around on one leg and nearly falling over. My hair, which only got a little bit wet at the ends, even froze because the air was colder than the water.

Well at least there was hot chocolate and digestive biscuits waiting after all that hard work (again, the manipulation of the drysuit was probably the hardest part of it all)!



We often describe things as being 'unforgettable', but it is rare that there are moments when we truly mean things to be that way. Seeing Silfra and underwater Iceland, though, are memories that are unforgettable in the purest sense of the word.

And the best part is that the day wasn't even over yet.

Caving adventures coming soon!

DIVE.IS, www.dive.is
Snorkeling Silfra and Lava Caving
E-mail: dive@dive.is
Phone: +354 663 2858
Hólmaslóð 2, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland

Disclaimer: I was invited to review this tour by DIVE.IS. All thoughts are my own and I received no compensation for this review. Some pictures used in this review were provided by DIVE.IS, who did not request that I nearly fall taking my dry suit off.