How Does It Feel To Scuba Dive Between Two Continents? Amazing!

It was September 8, 2017 – I was wandering around Keflavik airport, killing time before boarding my flight to Bergen, Norway. I found myself browsing through a little shop when I saw it. A pamphlet advertising a chance to go scuba diving between two continents! Scuba diving and Iceland were not two things I ever dreamed would be paired together. And diving a narrow crack between North America and Europe?! I was shocked. I wouldn’t have guessed that such a thing even existed.  

“How could I possibly not have known about this?” I asked myself. The disappointment hit me like a ton of bricks. My first trip to Iceland had just come to an end. Everything about the trip had exceeded any and all expectations I had of Iceland. I was already disappointed that I hadn’t booked a longer stay in such an amazing country, and in an instant, the disappointment grew exponentially worse. 

I quickly grabbed the pamphlet and read over it. It described diving the Silfra Fissure, where the North American and Eurasian Tectonic plates ripped apart. You could literally touch both continents (North America & Europe) at once! I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard about this before I arrived in Iceland. Now, I was leaving and had completely blown my chance at this unbelievable experience. I was still riding high from an otherwise fantastic trip, but I knew this gross error in destination research was going to haunt me forever.

The Good News

Thankfully, in this case, forever only lasted three years, nine months, and one day. 

As soon as I learned that Iceland was opening up to vaccinated tourists from the US, I went online and scheduled my first shot. The next order of business was to book my flight to Reykjavik. Immediately after clicking the “Confirm Purchase” button, I went to DIVE.IS to book my drysuit certification course and Silfra dive trip. Nearly four years of nagging regret were about to come to an end. I was going back to Iceland, and I was actually going to scuba dive between two continents!

First Things First

Before being allowed to dive the Silfra Fissure, you must first earn your drysuit diving certification. If the idea of diving between continents is something that sounds interesting to you, please note that having an advanced diver certification is a prerequisite to earning your drysuit certification. If all of that sounds a little too intense, don’t worry about it! You can snorkel the fissure with no previous certifications and still have a once-in-a-lifetime experience!

Drysuit Diving Certification Course

Having already completed a few hours of online coursework, I was ready to dive. At 8:30 sharp, my first morning back in Iceland, I met my dive instructor at the Dive.IS office near downtown Reykjavik. Shortly after, an Israeli couple on their honeymoon arrived to join us. After introductions, the four of us loaded up in a company van and headed to a large indoor swimming facility outside of town.

Pool Work

 Over the next couple of hours, our instructor, Ants, taught us all about our drysuits and how they differed from wetsuits. After equipment checks, we geared up for some trial dives in the warm waters of the indoor pool. Ants looked on patiently as the three of us sank, bobbed, and rolled our way from one end of the pool to the other. This was going to be trickier than I thought!

Open Water Dives

After completing our skills assessment, we climbed out of the pool for a much-needed break. We grabbed lunch at a bakery across the street before making our way to Þingvellir (Thingvellir) National Park. Once in the park, we completed two open-water dives and skills tests in the frigid waters of Lake Thingvallavatn.

After we finally finished, we lumbered our way onto the shores and changed into warm, dry clothes. Two of us, we discovered, had small leaks in our suits. I can assure you when you’re in 35ºF water, even a small leak makes a BIG impact on your comfort level. Ants promised to have us new suits for the following day. As a peace offering, he surprised us with a cup of hot chocolate to help warm us up before making the 45-minute drive back to Reykjavik.  

Exhausted, we arrived back in the city around 6:30 that evening. The certification course was complete. It was time to go home for dinner and sleep. The next day I was going scuba diving between continents! 

Scuba Diving Between Two Continents

The long-awaited day had finally come! I was back in Iceland after nearly four years and was about to go scuba diving between two continents. If it hadn’t been for the long day of training and a hint of jetlag, I doubt I could have slept for even a minute, considering how excited I was. 

Ants scheduled us to enter the fissure at around 11:00 am. I arrived at the meeting about an hour ahead of time to gear up and get a briefing on the details of the dive. Fully loaded, I must have had on a hundred pounds of gear. That made the roughly 100-yard walk from the parking lot to the fissure entrance a little tricky. I convinced myself it was a good opportunity to build up some body heat in my drysuit.

The Entrance

A gravel path led to a steel platform at the Silfra Fissure entry point. We gave a group of snorkelers a few minutes to go ahead of us so that the dive wouldn’t feel crowded. 

My heart was pounding, and my adrenaline was pumping. I couldn’t wait any longer. I spat in my mask and rubbed it in to prevent the lens from fogging up during the dive. Then, I rinsed it in the glacial water, strapped it around my head, and secured it under my neoprene hood. Ants helped pull my fin straps around my ankles. Then I headed straight into the water. 

The numbing water felt like taking a sledgehammer to the chest. It stole the breath from my lungs in an instant. I took a moment to adjust and steady my breathing. The cold was biting, but I was too excited to care.

The Dive

Once we all entered the water, I put my regulator in my mouth, deflated my BCD, and slowly sank beneath the surface of the frigid arctic water. This was it. I was really doing it— scuba diving between two continents. I couldn’t believe it!

The majority of our 47-minute dive took place in the fissure. We eased our way between two gigantic walls of solid rock. We were 50 feet below the surface of the 35ºF Icelandic water, swimming through a massive crack in the Earth’s surface. The visibility was virtually unlimited in the crystal-clear water. A gentle current helped us along as we floated through this surreal scene almost effortlessly. 

A few minutes into the dive, you come to a narrow section of the fissure. At less than 6-feet wide, this small gap is the exact spot we’ve all been waiting to reach. With arms spread wide, I reached out with both hands and touched either side of the fissure. Ants captured the moment with his underwater camera for proof. Not only was I scuba diving between two continents, but I was touching both of them at the same time! North America was in the palm of one hand, and Europe in the other. It was such a cool moment!

We swam through the fissure and into a small lagoon towards the exit platform. By this point, my hands and feet were numb from the cold. While I certainly didn’t want the dive to end, the prospect of getting out of the water and warming up sounded pretty good. We headed back to the van to change out of our dry suits and back into warm clothes. Ants broke out some more hot chocolate, and we had a little celebration in the parking lot before heading our separate ways.

What’s Next?

The experience was nothing short of incredible, and I am so grateful I had the opportunity not only to return to Iceland but to tick another big item off the bucket list too! I was frozen, though, and there was still so much to see and do in Iceland. So, without delay, I cranked up the heat in my rental car and headed straight for Mount Fagradalsfjall volcano!