But in the end the thermal springs did the trick, and within 10 minutes I was floating in 42-degree water overlooking the lake. Not bad for a Thursday at work.
Then it was time for the disposable undies - surprisingly comfortable - and a full body exfoliation which I was told would get rid of my dead skin. I didn't know I had much dead skin to get rid of, but the nice Argentinian man assured me there would be some.
I was as concerned about having a large man massage me as the next man would be, but after he talked about how the All Blacks favoured the spa and how Sonny Bill Williams had barely fitted on the table I decided I could handle it.
This was the first stage of what the Polynesian Spa call the Aix Therapy. The next was to have a five-nozzled overhead shower gently remove the natural mud and then a coconut scented oil was liberally applied to my entire body.
No doubt if I had been put to bake in an oven I would have come out tasting quite nice.
The Polynesian Spa was established in 1972, taking over the site of a historic bath house which dates all the way back to the 1800s.
Back then the establishment was named the Polynesian Pools, hosting 13 pools, and only introducing spa treatments in 1996.
The appeal of zip lining is pretty obvious to most people, but what I hadn't expected was to be educated on native birds and pest eradication techniques in between the six lines. This might have been boring, but both guides were so engaged it was actually extremely fun, and it hit home particularly hard how quiet the forest was on such a sunny day.
Native birds, they told us, have only a five per cent chance of reaching adulthood.
The longest zip line was named the Tui Song, which was 220m long and launched from a platform 22m up. I'm not sure my strangled scream really did the name justice.
But my favourite moment of the day was when a very British woman told one of her sons to be careful, because he was "her favourite" - right after she sent the younger boy off.
Rotorua Canopy Tours, which hosted me for the afternoon, used the operation to help fund their trapping, which began in August 2013 with more than 1000 manual traps.
During the first seven-day blitz more than 800 rats, possums, stoats, mice and cats were caught. There were pictures and having seen them it was no surprise the native birds had suffered.
Nowadays, the guides explained, the trapping had been made more efficient with 450 gas-powered traps in action and another 250 ready to go in later this year.
These new generation traps could kill 15 rats or possums before they even needed to be rebaited, and as one guide told us, it never dawned on these foreign critters to be suspicious of the piles of dead surrounding the delicious treat.
The number of predators being caught nowadays can be counted on your hands, meaning native birds have a much higher survival rate.
Currently 100 hectares of the forest is deemed to be pest free, which will extend to 220 later this year. The whole reserve is 500 hectares.
About $250,000 will have been spent on the efforts by the end of the year. I would personally recommend both of these activities to any foreigner or local looking for a new experience.
