Silfra Fissure: Swimming Between Two Continents

That morning we woke up early as at 9:30 we were about to start one of the best experiences we had in Iceland – snorkeling in Silfra Fissure in the Thingvellir National Park. This is a place where the Eurasian and North American continents meet and drift apart every year about 2 cm, creating a lagoon called Silfra where you can swim in pure glacier water between those two tectonic plates! This was an idea of my cousin and I am thankful to him for this. So if you go to Iceland, I hope this post will motivate you to put snorkeling/diving in Silfra on your list!

Snorkeling in Silfra Fissure

We joined our instructor Scott from DIVE.IS and other 4 people from our group and got ready for the activity which took altogether about 2.5 hours (with actual 45 minutes of snorkeling). As the water in Silfra has around 3°C all year round, you need to wear a dry suit. It is recommended to wear thermal clothes and some really, but I mean really WARM socks under. So you can imagine that we spent the first hour just by changing ourselves (there is a changing room van available) while being assisted by our instructor and listening to some interesting geological and historical information. 

Once ready, we walked to the entrance of the lagoon, put in the mask and went into the water. For me, it was the first time wearing a dry suit and I felt funny and strange at the same moment. When the suit touches the water, it blows up with air and you are basically floating and don’t even your finger to stay above the water level. And I am not even talking about the duck face it makes! 😀 We slowly tested whether no water enters the dry suit – it only entered under the gloves and I felt it around my head and neck but the body got used to it in few minutes. Once you start to enjoy the natural beauty beneath your floating body, you simply forget about being cold (at least for the first 30 minutes). 😀 

The underwater visibility here was just perfect and on the deepest places up to 20-30 m (for snorkeling). The sun was shining that morning which lightened nicely the crystal-clear glacier water and made the mixture of deep blue, green and yellow colors below look amazing! Actually, the water in Silfra is probably the purest water on Earth and also pretty good to drink (I don’t joke, I did many times when laughing 😀 ). As our instructor told us, it takes the glacier water 30-100 years being filtered through the porous underground lava until it reaches the Thingvellir lake.

Here are some awesome pictures taken by our instructor Scott from DIVE.IS, enjoy!

The snorkeling took about 45 minutes and I can tell you that I did not see the time passing. Although I really enjoyed it, I was happy to get out of the water as I started to freeze, especially my head and hands which were partially exposed to the cold water. We walked back to the parking lot where the base with a changing room van was. Again we were helped with taking the dry suit off, then we warmed up a bit in our clothes and got some hot chocolate and cookies. 🙂 

More info

Snorkeling or Diving in Silfra can easily fit your Golden Circle Tour as it lies in the Thingvellir National Park, about 60 km from Reykjavik. You can find more information on the website of DIVE.IS.

Have you been to Silfra? Did you do snorkeling or diving? Tell me about it in the below comments!

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Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post nor did I receive any reward for writing about snorkeling in Silfra. I simply want to share my experience with you! All photos were taken by our instructor Scott and belong to DIVE.IS.