Once you’re on the moon, Venus isn’t so far away

Silfra Photo by David Ramsay Chief Instructor at dive.is

Iceland’s landscape is often compared to the moon. So much so that moon-bound astronauts have trained here, and David Attenborough has filmed places here to show audiences the landscape of prehistoric earth.

But a few weeks ago I left the Icelandic moonscape and headed for another planet entirely: Silfra rift, at the edge of Thingvallavatn lake, is one of the few places this far north you can take a dive or go snorkeling. Prior to this experience, the only place I’d snorkeled was tropical Bougainville, north-east of Australia. This time, donning thermals and a dry-suit instead of a bikini, there were no schools of electric blue fish, but there was a rocky chasm so deep I got vertigo peering into it as I floated along.

There was one fish, a young trout or char, and even she was heading back towards the warmer waters of the lake—the water in Silfra comes straight from a glacier and is a chilly 3°C or so (in summer!) while the lake is generally a couple of degrees warmer. The water’s so clean you can drink it on the spot (well, I did).

The Silfra rift is the divide between the continental plates—Europe on your right, America to the left, occasionally both within arm’s reach but moving apart about 2cm per year. After the dreamlike otherworldly drifting, gazing, trying to work out whether that bright green ‘grass’ is plant or animal and whether this whole waterscape is something like Venus used to be…, you can get out, walk back along the shore, and then jump from a low rock back into the gorge. I have to admit I was unreasonably scared of doing this—it’s just a few metres above the water, but because the cliffs extend further than the eye can see below the water, my instincts were strongly against leaping! I eventually jumped, after much encouragement from the dive.is crew, and was grateful for the dry-suit that sent me popping straight back up to the surface like a cork. New on my wish list: get a diving license so I can check out everything far below the surface too!