Today was the day I chose a crazy activity.....snorkelling. My original plan was to wetsuit snorkel because I wanted to dive under the water but the fact that I was frozen the minute we arrived & the guides strong recommendation, changed my mind to drysuit diving instead. The Silfra fissure is a fissure between the European and American continental plates. Water comes into it from a glacier that is 50km away & it takes 30-100yrs to reach the fissure. It gets filtered through the volcanic rock over those years so by the time it gets into the fissure it is crystal clear (100m visibility) and pure (completely drinkable). But it is also cold....2 degrees celcius. Thud morning was a miserable morning, very overcast, bitterly icy cold winds & some rain/snow showers. 1min outside without my gloves & my fingers were numb. The guides helped us into our inner suits then our outer drysuits. I've never been drysuit diving before. Man these suits are tight!! Once my fingers were frozen I couldn't warm then up. Cold fingers = miserable Manda. There were so many so get suited up that we had to stand in the cold for ages. We were eventually given gloves, hoods, mask, snorkel & flippers & taken to the lagoon. We queued up to go in, GoPros at the ready. We all looked like beached whales, even more so once we got into the water & the suits puffed up! Honestly I couldn't feel the water on my main body parts, but the hood & gloves are normal wetsuit material & your mouth is totally exposed. These areas froze.
Under water it was beautiful though. Amazing colours from yellow near the surface to dark blue down below. And so perfectly undisturbed. It was quite magical. We swam along the fissure stopping to video each other as one ponit where we could touch both plates at the same time. We then swam into a lagoon before getting out. I was a cold, numb & miserable mess by the time I got back to the truck. The guide got me out of the suit then I put on 4 layers of clothing & hand/toes/body warmers to help warm me up. I took videos on my GoPro and will try to upload them.
Next I went to the Whales of Iceland museum. It's a large building which has a number of life size models of whales and lots of information.
Next I walked back into central Reykjavik. It is a nice city, full of Christmas lights. They love the lights here, every building & house is decked out. 2 reasons for this: they like the look & it is so dark here in winter it adds color & brightness. There are a lot of Christmas gift ahops here too. I think they just love everything about Christmas. I managed to find one of the famous hot dog stands during my walk. I was told I had to have an Icelandic with the lot. This is a hot dog with raw onion, fried onion, ketchup & mayo. It was surprisingly good!
I continued my walk and found lots of souvenir shops. Things are quite expensive here so it was website shopping only.
I made my way to the Icelandic Phallological Museum, a place I had been looking forward to seeing. For this who don't know, it's also called the Penis Museum. They have lots of penises from a variety of animals. Quite interesting to see all the different shapes & sizes!
My northern lights tour has been cancelled for tonight due to the clouds so its a chill night tonight. Staying warm for once!
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