It's like Indiana Jones' New Zealand's springs prove hotspot for tourists

To get to the geothermal pool of the Squeeze near Taupo in New Zealand, you need to kayak across a lake and wade through a stream pinched between the narrow walls of a canyon.

- Shanti Mathias

To get to the geothermal pool of the Squeeze near Taupo in New Zealand, you need to kayak across a lake and wade through a stream pinched between the narrow walls of a canyon. As she walked through the forest to get to the pool, Carmen Chan could feel the mud between her toes getting warmer.

"It was such a visceral way to be in the forest," Chan said. The pool had a hot waterfall; the steam created a fogginess "like an Indiana Jones adventure" - even though the real world, golf courses and roads, was only about 4 miles away. A decade after that first trip, the now 32-year-old Chan is still hooked. The doctor regularly goes to local hot springs to soak her feet after a long shift at Rotorua hospital.

Rotorua, three hours' drive from Auckland in northern New Zealand, has geothermal pools thanks to the Taupo volcanic zone, an area of activity caused by the Pacific tectonic plate melting as it is pulled underneath the Australian plate.