Silfra snorkelling & diving in Iceland

Two to four degrees Celsius, all year. It is glacial meltwater filtered through lava for decades, which is why visibility runs to a hundred metres. You wear a dry suit over a thermal undersuit, so your body stays dry and warm. Your face, lips and hands are the parts that feel it, and after thirty to forty minutes in the water most people are ready to get out. Hot chocolate afterwards is standard.

No, but you must be comfortable in water. The dry suit floats you, so you drift along the fissure with a gentle current doing most of the work. You do need to be able to swim, and operators set minimum age, height and weight limits and ask about medical conditions on a form. Check the tour page for the current limits before booking. Glasses cannot be worn under the mask; contact lenses are fine.

Yes. The water is the same temperature in January as in July, and the visibility is the same. What changes is the air: getting into and out of the suit at minus five with wind is unpleasant, and daylight limits the departure times. Fewer people snorkel in winter, so the fissure is quieter. If you are here between November and February and want it, book the earliest slot for the best light.

Not on a standard dive tour. Operators require a dry suit certification or a logged number of dry-suit dives within the last two years, plus an open-water certificate. If you have neither, the two-day PADI dry suit course with a Silfra dive (/experience/19038/) gets you certified and in the fissure. Snorkelling (/experience/208/) has no certification requirement and shows you the same rock walls from the surface. Most people are happy with snorkelling.

In Þingvellir National Park, about 45 minutes from Reykjavík, on the Golden Circle route. If you have a car, book the meet-on-location snorkel (/experience/208/) and park at the Silfra car park; there is a parking fee. Without a car, book the version with Reykjavík pickup (/experience/17145/) or combine it with the Golden Circle (/experience/103202/) so you see Geysir and Gullfoss the same day.

Warm socks, thermal base layers or fleece to wear under the undersuit, and a change of clothes in case of a leak. Leave cotton at home; it stays wet. Everything else, the dry suit, hood, gloves, mask and fins, is provided. Long hair should be tied back. Do not eat a heavy meal right before; the neck seal is tight. Bring a towel and a woolly hat for afterwards.

From €100 to €543 a person, with a typical price of €232. That is the median of 26 per-person day-tour fares we currently sell. Multi-day packages and private charters are priced differently and sit outside those figures.

Silfra Snorkel tour with Freedive Iceland, at €100 a person. Read what it actually is before booking on price alone — the cheapest line is sometimes an admission ticket rather than a guided trip, and a large coach costs less per seat than a small-group minibus because it gives you less time at each stop.

40 of them, from 9 operators: Freedive Iceland, Your Friend in Reykjavik, Arctic Adventures, Elding Adventure at Sea, Superjeep.is, Adventure Vikings and 3 more. Every one is a company we hold a contract with — we do not list everything in Iceland, on purpose.

Day tours run from 2.5 hours to 10 hours, most commonly about 6 hours. Pickup and drop-off are usually inside that figure, so a three-hour tour from Reykjavík can mean closer to four door to door.

Yes — 1 of the 40 run over two days or more. Those include accommodation and usually breakfast; check the individual itinerary.

22 of 40 (55%) offer pickup. The rest ask you to meet on location. Pickup is the single most common cause of a missed tour in Iceland: it runs to a window rather than a time, and the bus will not wait long.

8 of the 40 are private, the other 32 are shared departures. Private costs more in total but is priced per vehicle, so for four or more people it often works out close per head — and you set the pace.

Across the next 360 days of live availability we hold departures in October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September. That is a rolling window rather than the whole year, so a month missing from that list is not necessarily a month with nothing running.

Cutoffs run from 1 to 12 hours before departure, and 23 of them accept bookings inside 24 hours — so booking the night before is often possible. Popular winter tours sell out days ahead regardless of the cutoff.

30 of 40 (75%) allow free cancellation at least 24 hours before departure. The exact window is on each tour page and comes from the operator's own policy, not ours. If the operator cancels for weather you are refunded in full.

Operators rate them: 20 easy, 12 moderate, 5 demanding, 3 very easy. Iceland's ratings assume weather — an easy walk in still air is a different proposition in 15 m/s of wind.

33 of the 40 set one, ranging from 12 to 18 years. The rest have no stated minimum, which usually means infants are allowed but not that the tour suits them.

16 of 40 are marked family-friendly by the operator. That is their judgement rather than ours, and it usually means the walking is short and the vehicle has a toilet.

Varies by operator. Across these: national park entrance fee on 18, admission fees on 5, wi-fi on board on 2, bus fare on 2, goods and services tax on 1. Anything not listed as included is not included — Icelandic operators are literal about this.

39 of 40 are guided in person, with guiding offered in Danish, English, French, German, Icelandic, Italian and 2 more. English is standard on every shared departure in Iceland; other languages usually mean a private guide.

They start from Golden Circle area (Selfoss, Flúðir, Þingvellir), Capital Region (Reykjavík), South Coast (Hella, Hvolsvöllur, Vík), Reykjanes & Blue Lagoon. Where a tour starts matters more in Iceland than how long it lasts: the same tour from Reykjavík and from Vík are different days entirely.

The operator cancels and refunds you in full — Icelandic operators cancel readily, and that is a good sign rather than a bad one. What they will not do is refund you for a tour that ran and simply had poor visibility. Wind cancels more tours here than rain or cold.