After turning it the right way in, I'd managed to get it up above my knees before it started becoming hard work. I don't know if the extreme difficulty involved in getting that wetsuit on reflected on my recent overindulgence in KFC, or whether wetsuits are just tricky for everyone.
I was told later that it could have something to do with what I affectionately refer to as child-bearing hips.
Whatever the case, just pulling the wetsuit up was already tiring me out. One of the instructors and our Chronicle photographer Stu had to each grab a side of the suit and literally bounce me into it. Lucky for my self-esteem, several other girls had to have the same done.
Then we were piling on to a bus with a large group of tourists from England and Sweden and we were off up the bumpy, gravel road to our starting point along the Rangitikei River.
Trip leader Sam Alabone-Battye stood at the front of the bus and gave us a safety briefing about what to do if anyone fell out of their raft.
If we needed to pull anyone back in, we were to grab them by their jacket straps and fall backwards into the raft.
"Give them a cuddle," said Sam, "they've probably just had a bit of a traumatic experience."
The girl sitting next to me was from England, Anna. As it turned out, Anna and I were going to be getting pretty up-close and personal over the next four hours.
She and I and a girl called Olivia were put in a raft with Sam the cuddle-adviser, and as we set off on our trip, he started teaching us different commands we'd need to follow.
For example, whenever he called "over left", I was to throw myself sideways so I was lying front down across Anna's lap. When he called "over right", it was vice versa.
I realised relatively quickly that going white water rafting involved taking a lot of orders from your instructor. As I wasn't a rebellious teen, taking orders wasn't an issue, but hearing them was another thing.
At one point I could have sworn Sam called "forward", so I started paddling forwards as hard as I could, only to hear: "For the love of God, Melissa, back-paddle!"
Whoops.
For the most part our little team worked well. We didn't tip out - although another group did - and by the end of the trip we'd perfected the over lefts and rights.
Several times we stopped for a swim and floated on our backs while the current carried us down the river. There was one part of the trip where we took turns sliding down a water chute, and I was given the opportunity to demonstrate just how bad a swimmer I really was.
While everybody else was swimming off to the rocks, I kept finding myself being dragged back towards that chute. Luke Moffat, a 25-year-old English tourist, held out his hand to pull me back, but ended up being dragged with me. Twice.
As if to make things worse, my shoe started slipping off my foot. Just in time to save my shoe, Sam showed up with the raft and pulled me back in - although I didn't get any cuddles.
The trip as a whole was fantastic. Sure, it cruelly emphasised to me how horribly unfit I was, but the rapids were exciting without being frightening and the water was that perfect blue-green (drinkable, Sam told us). The scenery was utterly amazing.
River Valley Lodge assistant manager Janey Megaw told me the rapids were a bit faster and a little more intense when the river was fuller, but the day we came levels were quite low. This makes for a more "technical" journey, where there's more maneuvering to be done.
Compared to last year, when the drought hit, this summer has been great, she said.
"We've been rafting since 1982," she said.
"Originally the business was just a weekend business started by my grandparents."
Ms Megaw is a third generation rafter, and has taken her children down the river as well.
She said they had different rafts for different water levels - for example, when the river was too low they could take out the two-man rafts, and customers were able to control their own rafts.
Not all the trips were wild and adventurous - families could take a scenic journey down the river with the little ones.
Ms Megaw said it was up to the discretion of the instructor to decide if a child was too young, adding the age was usually 5 and up.
The minimum age for grade 4-5 rapids (the highest grade) was 13.
They'd also had "quite a few" people in their 60s taking the scenic trip, but it depended on the river flows at the time.
Our group, however, probably had an average age of 22 - no doubt the perfect age to be rushing down rapids and whacking into rocks left, right and centre.
For anyone else whose interests are whacking into rocks, I'd recommend white water rafting. Warning, though, it comes with a side of awesome, so be prepared.
