IT didn’t sound like a very good idea to me, not in the middle of a New Zealand winter.
The plan was to take a jet-boat ride that would see me speeding along a 40km stretch of the Waikato River, climb into the water and squeeze through rocks to explore a thermal stream, soak in the warm mineral water for a while, and then return to the boat to retrace the route home.
If it was during the warmer part of the year I wouldn’t have thought twice about the activity, but I knew there would be a lot of opportunity for me to be very cold engaging in such an outing on a day when the mercury probably wouldn’t climb out of single digits.
And, adding to my level of discomfort about the excursion, I couldn’t figure out how I was going to climb over rocks elegantly wearing my bright yellow togs.
But when I arrived at the River Jet office, on the road between Lake Taupo and Rotorua in the heart of New Zealand’s North Island, all was revealed.
I was given a thick rash vest, a long wetsuit, and a spray jacket for keeping warm in the boat, and told that the water level was high enough that I would simply be floating around the rocks rather than clambering over them.
This activity is called The Squeeze, and it’s a unique experience that lets visitors ''take the waters'' in this part of New Zealand that’s famous for thermal springs.
We started the outing by tearing along the Waikato River – it’s New Zealand’s longest, starting just south of Lake Taupo and emptying into the sea 425km later near Auckland – where we got a lesson on Maori history when the driver stopped the boat to enjoy the silence on the water.
The ride wasn’t much fun – the wind cut through my layers of wetsuit material, and the cold made my eyes water like I was peeling an onion – and our driver seemed to take great delight in throwing the boat around.
But soon he pulled into a quiet cove, tied the boat to the bank, and we ditched our spray jackets and lowered ourselves into the Waikato water.
I was expecting it to be freezing cold, but the thermal water that was feeding into the river just a few metres away warmed the little bay enough to make it comfortable.
So onwards it was, and we waded into the stream and started pushing past rocks to make our way to the place where the water comes out of the ground above a small waterfall.
It was a tight fit at times, with the rocks close enough that I could only just squeeze through walking sideways like a crab, but I never got that claustrophobic feeling because I could always look up and see the sky.
After a couple of minutes of negotiating the rocks – and doing it rather elegantly in my slimming black ensemble, I must say – we came out into the open and walked upstream until we reached the waterfall that was marked by clouds of steam where the water plunged over the rocks.
We had a few minutes to soak in the tepid pool, and standing under the falling water felt a little like getting a firm massage from a therapist with very strong hands, and there wasn’t much conversation because of the noise made by the tumbling liquid.
We made our way back to the boat, and then it was time for the ride back to base which was as cold as I feared it would be.
And, to add to my discomfort, the driver kept doing the aquatic equivalent of the hand-break turn which would violently throw everyone out of their seats and into one corner of the boat as the vessel came to a flying stop.
Turns out it wasn’t such a good idea after all, and the cold I bought home from the other side of the Tasman will support that, but it was a bit of an adventure to explore a thermal stream that only a handful of the locals know about.
