How Was My First Drysuit Dive? It Wasn't.

Okay, I'm going to start off by mentioning that it's 11:30 P.M. right now. It's be a VERY full day. I wouldn't even be sitting here writing this except that I desperately want to get my thoughts about this day down while they are fresh. I'm sorry, but I won't be taking the time to even attempt to post pics. Must write then go to bed.

Okay, so my day started at 7:00, and I was very lucky in that nobody else was in the washroom, so I was able to get a shower in. There are 2 other rooms, both double occupancy that share the one bathroom. Wasn't really expecting that. Anyway, I got up, had some breakfast in the main building (included in the price of the room fortunately) and got downstairs by 8:00 to meet my dive guide David.

We were a multicultural crew today. My guide David is, as expected, Icelandic, although he's been living in Sweden for the past four years. The other two people in our group were Helmut from Germany, and Anastasia from Greece. Fortunately for me the conversation was all in English, so I fit right in. We headed out to Thingvellir park with David providing all sorts of stories and cultural insights along the way.

We met up with a second group at the park and made our way to Silfra, the section of the lake that we'd be diving in. The second group was sticking around for another dive, but our group was just doing a single dive today and then heading out sightseeing. Two dives each for the next two days. Our group did end up stealing a person from the other group, so Cathy from Minnesota joined us for the rest of the day.

So, I'm sure that you're all wondering about the title of this post. We got geared up and walked (not an inconsiderable distance) to the entry point. For anyone considering it, this dive requires a certain level of physical fitness, lots of walking in your gear! Anyway, the dry suit had built in boots, but not gloves, so it seals with latex around the wrists and neck and then we wore wetsuit gloves and hood over top. Well apparently while pulling on my right glove I slightly lifted the seal of the suit at my wrist. We got ourselves in the water and I started playing with my buoyancy a bit. Well it only took a few seconds before I started to feel a steady, cold (2-4 degrees Celsius) stream running down my arm. By the time I got resurfaced, explained to David that I'd sprung a leak, and got back to shore I was pretty wet. One of the other instructors fixed up my wrist and got me back in the water. Now, at this point I'm a little wet and cold under the suit, which is why I didn't immediately notice that I had another, far more significant leak. At some point in the preceding events my dry suit's zipper had sprung a catastrophic leak. I happened to be in a suit where the zipper runs along the back of your shoulders, and it was leaking at my right shoulder, which was already wet from my first leak. My first indication that something was wrong was that I couldn't maintain buoyancy to save my life! I kept pumping air into my suit and just kept slowly sinking if I stopped kicking. It was David who noticed the steady stream of bubbles coming from my zipper and pulled me back to shore. By the time I got out my suit was probably about 20lbs heavier. We went back to the staging area and I pulled the suit off, dumping several litres of trapped water on to the ground. Of course, my thermal under layer was soaked. So I had to strip down and get into another one. That was a lovely time. In 12 degree weather I'm soaking wet, standing outside in my underwear. I got dried off, got a dry base-layer on, and got into a new suit. I went with the second instructor, obviously having lost the main group, but I was just thrilled that my equipment failure didn't lead to a missed dive.

Now that we're past the drama, on to the dive itself. It was incredible! I did my best to get lots of pictures, though most of them turned out a bit blurry. Still, once I get a chance to post them you'll see just how awesome the area is. You're moving from pool to pool going through massive underwater canyons. The water is from a melting glacier and runs through many kilometers of rock before coming out perfectly filtered into the lake, so the visibility is the best you could possibly ask for. It was an excellent dive, and I look forward to hitting it again when we return on Saturday. Tomorrow we'll be ocean diving, which I'm also really looking forward to.

Having completed the dive we got our gear off and headed out sightseeing. That worked out really well, since after the back-and-forth to get my equipment changed, and the serious chill I got from my flood I was pretty tired and not really up for a second dive anyway. We took a drive out to Geysir, which unsurprisingly is a geyser, since that's where we get the word geyser from. The original Geysir is largely inactive now, but there is plenty of activity elsewhere on the site, including a geyser which erupts about once every 5 minutes. We took time for lunch, and I got to try my first pylsa, and Icelandic hotdog. It was pretty good, and is apparently made out of lamb, which seems to be a real staple of the Icelandic diet. I also had a very good lamb soup.

From Geysir we went to Gullfoss, the golden falls. The large falls are an impressive sight and one of the "can't miss" sights on an Icelandic tour, so I was happy that we got to check them out. From there we were scheduled to just return to Reykjavik, but we made a couple stops along the way. That's the great advantage of having a tour that just consists of 4 tourists in a Volkswagen van. We stopped at Keridh, which is the sight of a collapsed volcanic crater, which was pretty awesome. We also swung through a small town just because David had heard that a recent earthquake had opened up some new hotsprings. Sure enough we found an area where a huge crack had opened in the earth and water was boiling out of it. I love random discoveries like that!

When we got back to Reykjavik I had dinner with Helmut and Anastasia. We ate at the Fish Company, which despite the industrial sounding name is actually quite a posh and expensive restaurant. Of course I never realize these things until I've already entered in my hiking gear. Oh well, they didn't throw me out for being poorly dressed, and that's all that matters. I did their tasting menu, which turned out to be a great choice. I especially enjoyed a started that consisted of pieces of lobster over rhubarb coated in a sauce of some description. I got a picture of the very nicely presented main course of lamb wrapped in what they described as pancake, but was more crepe-like in consistency. Also very awesome.

By the time we finished that lengthy meal it was nearly 10:00, but I just had to come out to organize my photos and update my blog while the details of this VERY busy day were still fresh in my mind. I wouldn't have been able to do this, but it turns out that our dives won't begin until 2:00 P.M. tomorrow, so I'll be able to sleep in. My free breakfast is only served from 7-9 tomorrow morning, but I think I'm just going to leave the alarm off and sleep as late as I feel like. If I burn on the breakfast then so be it. It's midnight now and I'm very sleepy, and I don't feel like getting up early tomorrow. I haven't figured out how I'll spend my morning tomorrow, but I'll let you know when I've figured it all out... probably after I've got back from and afternoon of diving. Good night for now!