August 23 - Black and Blue

Fun fact: between the marathon and our various outings to Reykjavik Culture Night, my Apple Watch reports I covered nearly 53 km on foot yesterday. The sensible thing to do is have a restful day inside to let my muscles recover.

I am not sensible.

Instead, we caught an early morning tour out to Þingvellir National Park for the "Black and Blue" tour. "Black" consisted of caving in Gjabakkahellir Lava Tube, which proved quite difficult on wobbly legs as the lava rocks are smooth, slippery, and quite light (meaning often that boulders that looked to be quite heavy and stable turned out to be ready to rock back and forth with little weight).

After lunch the "Blue" segment of the tour consisted of a snorkel in Silfra Fissure, which forms where the European tectonic plate (left, in photo below) separates from the North American plate (right) and fills with ice-cold glacial runoff. After about an hour of prep ("teddy bear" suit (warm), then "otter" suit (dry), then hoods, collars, booties, gloves, goggles, and snorkels) we were finally ready to plunge into the frigid water.

By the time we entered the water the only exposed skin left was our lips, which instantly stung when we hit the water then went completely numb within minutes (to the point that it was difficult to talk for several minutes when we were done).

"Blue" is barely the right name for this leg of the tour, as "Clear" would be more appropriate. The water filters through 50 km of rock after leaving the glacier and thus is perfectly clear, clean, and even safe to drink. (The photo below looks bluer and less clear than it was, as my camera struggled with its first-ever swim and extreme cold.) The subtle current gently carried us over crevices and caves visible tens of meters down into darkness, creating the illusion that we were flying.

Or perhaps this should have been the "Green" section of the tour, in honor of the "silly string" algae that blanketed the shallower sections. (I took the tour guide's advice and tried drinking some of the water and I'm pretty sure I took in quite a bunch of this algae as well - yum!)

Afterwards we were driven back to Reykjavik to collect our car and got out of the "big city" to Grindavik. Tomorrow is a day of recharging the batteries before starting our driving tour of the Ring Road around the island.