Day 3. Another easy day, started with a whale watching out of Reykjavik, followed by Snorkling at Silfra.
I booked the whale watching the night before with little difficulty. Not a lot of whales out of
Whale-watching-out-of-Reykjavik-on-Special-Tours
Reykjavik this time of year, but sighted 1 Minkie whale and a pod of dolphins spent about half an hour playing around the boat.
Less than an hours drive outside of Reykjavik brought me to the diving site at Sifra. About 3 operators offer similar experiences. Diving for those with a current ticket (my Padi hasn’t been maintained in years unfortunately) and snorkling for others.
The process is about 2 hours, with about 35 minutes in the water. Yes, it takes that long to get in and out of the Dry Suit. A little of your mouth and face is exposed to the near 2 deg C water, and that goes numb fairly quickly, and a little water may get into you gloves, otherwise its not too bad. Don’t put this off thinking its going to be too cold !
The photos you see are pretty accurate. Edges get stirred up from fins at times, but sediment seems to settle quickly keeping an exceptional visibility with stunning colours.
Tips. On arrival, you drive past and into the car park where you have to buy a parking permit for the national park. If you don’t, they will put a reminder on your car. No fine it seems, just a friendly reminder, so make sure you do the right thing. It’s a bit of a walk back to the dive preparation site, so take a backpack with your stuff, the operators will secure your things in one of their vehicles while you are diving.
If you take a camera or GoPro, make sure its waterproof and has a wrist strap. There are sections that would be unrecoverable if you were to drop it.
WILT – What I am listening to ?
Don’t try to read too much into these WILT’s, it’s often just that earworm from my music library