I booked a long weekend in Iceland. The flight was with Icelandair. It wasn't exactly cheap as I booked it late. £299 is a bit pricey for a 3 hour flight and it didn't include free drinks either. Their entertainment system was pretty good though, so it passed quite quickly.
Strokkur Geyser |
The next morning, I was up bright an early and heading back to Thingvellir. This time I was going diving with DIVE.IS. They do pick-ups from hotels in Reykjavik and the bus station. The plan was to dive a spot called Sifra Crack, which is a crack in the earth in the zone between the American plate and the Eurasian one. The main draw is the visibility. It's filled with water that comes from a glacier and is then filtered through miles of rock. It's also quite cold, as you can imagine. My computer registered 4.7C.
Silfra Crack |
The viz was indeed exceptional. It's hard to say exactly how far you could see, but it was probably 60+m. The dive site itself goes down to a maximum of 18m, though I didn't go below 13m. There are also places where rocks have falled in the crack. In some places you can swim under them, in others you need to come relatively shallow, so you end up with a fairly saw tooth profile. Fortunately, it is quite shallow.
Other than rocks, there are a few fish, mostly Artic Char and some algae. Some of the algae is bright green and looks like silly string. We swam down the crack and then emerged into the lake before getting back out again. It felt like I had a couple of armfuls of water, but it was just the cold. I was actually bone dry when I took off my suit.
Our second dive was the same again, though this time we swam back up another, shallower crack from the lake. Without all the hanging around, it felt much warmer this time with just my hands and head getting a bit cold. It was certainly an experience. I've not seen water that clear outside of the Mexican cenotes.
Back into town and we were out that night, though a little bit early for the main nightlife. The locals don't even start coming out until midnight. Everywhere is quiet up until that point. Prices in Iceland used to be high, but now the food and drinks prices were no worse than London prices. The following day, we stopped at Blue Lagoon on the way back to the airport. It was an interesting 3 day break with plenty of things to see.