I snorkeled in 2 degree celcius water today. I also saw the most gorgeous national park, an erupting geyser, and a wild waterfall that took my breath away.
When we woke up, the sun was shining and the wind was calm for the first time since we’ve been here. We left the house right as the sun was coming up and headed straight to Þingvellir National Park. Everywhere we looked was stunning. We stopped countless times to take pictures. It was funny looking through them because we started out taking pictures of every single, relatively unremarkable thing and they just became more and more impressive.
We made it to the park, took in the views and went hiking on down through some paths. I stopped for awhile to just lie down and take it all in. It was a perfect morning.
We headed down the road just a bit to meet up with our snorkeling guides. They were friendly and humorous and helped us every step of the way. We drove to the snorkeling site, Silfra, which is the ever-widening rift between the North American and Eurasian continental plates.
The process of getting ready to snorkel in 2 degree water is an intense one. We were told to wear thermal underwear and two pairs of wool socks. They gave us thick, warm thermal suits to put on over that. Once we managed that part, we were to get our drysuit from them. The dry suit was incredibly difficult to put on. It was thick, heavy, and insulated with boots attached to the end. It was nearly impossible getting our hands through the wrists of the sleeves and our heads through the neck.
At this point it was already difficult to breathe due to the tightness and weight of everything, but since I have a thin neck, the guide got a choker to wrap over the material surrounding it to be absolutely sure no water would be able to get in.
Next came the hoods, also airtight… then the gloves. At this point, I had practically lost all circulation to my hands anyway. After all this, we were handed our fins and our snorkel masks and had to waddle across the street to the water’s edge. It took another 10 minutes for us to get our masks and fins on, and that’s where the fun began. We hopped into the freezing cold water, but the suits kept us warm everywhere but our hands (the gloves were neoprene, allowing a layer of water to get in), and the exposed parts of our faces. It was certainly a shock at first, but I quickly got used to it and looked under the water to see for 100 meters of various shades of blue and green. It was beautiful.
I followed our guide, trying to figure out how to use my fins while taking in as much of the view as possible. We stopped about halfway to make sure everything was good. The sun was still shining and the weather beautiful. I ducked my head back under and continued on. The next time we came up was at our exit point. All of a sudden, it was blizzard conditions outside. I was not ready to get out of the water in that, so we snorkeled around the area a bit more.
At this point, I was starting to feel the cold again. We clumsily climbed out of the water and got our fins taken off. We carried our fins for the 300 meter walk back to the cars. Before we were done, Anthony jumped off a cliff back into the water.
The process of taking our gear off was every bit as difficult as putting in on, but soon enough we were back to normal, sipping hot chocolate and eating cookies. We grabbed our stuff and continued on our way. Next stop: Geysir.
The Great Geysir, which is what all geysers are named after, is very unpredictable with its eruptions, but there was another large, active geyser right across from it named Strokkur. It was fun just waiting for the geyser to erupt with the cameras ready, eager to catch it. After a few eruptions, we turned around and went along our journey.
Gullfoss waterfall was our final destination for the day, and in my opinion, we saved the best for last.
We explored every area around Gullfoss that we could, wanting to make sure we didn’t miss a single view of it.
Gullfoss is wild and ferocious, and the weather around it while we were there was just as much so. We were there for around an hour, and during that time we had snow, rain, hail, with the sun appearing for awhile in between each of those. It didn’t bother us though. We were more than content hiking around the waterfall and feeling its spray.
Once we had our fill, we headed back home driving up through mountains and back down to the lava-scarred landscape that we have become used to.