17/3/09 - 7/4/09 When we first got back to Auckland from Waimana, we only booked three nights because we hoped to fly to the South Island after that (or hire another car and get the ferry across.) However, then we realised that our funds weren't big enough to let us get over there until our next installment went through, so we had to extend our stay for another two weeks and five days! When it did come through, we were finally able to try and book our flights down. This is when disaster struck....
We saw we still couldn't afford to get to the South Island, because since the last time we'd looked at the prices, they'd all been about doubled because of the Easter holidays! :( :( We thought about hiring a car and crossing on the ferry instead, but then found out that the price of the ferry had also increased ridiculously. It's so annoying, because we couldn't book it enough in advance because we didn't have the money at the time, and then now our money has come through, they've put all the prices right up due to Easter, so that we still don't have enough! Well, we do technically have enough, but if we did it then we wouldn't have enough left to live on for the first two weeks of South America. Looking back to when we first booked our trip, we were such idiots to have arranged both to arrive and leave from Auckland - if we'd arranged to arrive at a town in the South Island, like Christchurch or Queenstown, then we'd have been able to do everything as we travelled upwards to leave from Auckland.
We were both very disappointed about this, so to at least partly make up for it, we decided to hire a car for a week anyway (the car hire prices have thankfully not increased due to Easter) and explore some other nice places in the North Island, like Raglan. Raglan is famous for surfing, and Dave's read that there's a black sand beach nearby. I was determined to swim at a black sand beach before I left New Zealand, so at least I'll be able to do that!
During our drawn-out time in Auckland, we haven't been able to do much because of funds being tight. We've managed to get some free internet every day at the library, and visited the contemporary art gallery nearby (I wasn't very impressed by some pieces there, but others were better.) We've tried some Korean pancakes, which are delicious and cheap; the batter is so thick it's like a dough almost - they dump a big lump of it onto a hotplate and then squash it flat with a circular metal instrument, where it fries nicely. It still retains the same texture as a normal pancake. I definitely recommend these if you see them offered anywhere! We've also tried some delicious cookies from the 'Mrs Higgins Oven Ready Cookies' chain, and I sampled a persimmon from an Asian supermarket. We're going to try a durian fruit when we get back to Auckland in a week's time. In the evenings we've had a few walks round the marina area, too, and I applied for a voluntary placement at the Parliamentary Archives in the UK - they couldn't email me the security form so are posting it to me in Auckland. Hopefully it'll arrive in time before we leave on the 18th!

(Squeamish people stop reading here.) I also had to go to the doctor at one point, because I could feel painful hard masses under my left arm. This was diagnosed as my lymph glands swelling up because of a bacterial infection. The day after the appointment a big swelling came up; it got really inflamed and tender, and it was placed at the top where arm actually begins, so it was painful every time I moved the arm because of the way they pressed against each other. It got worse, so that I couldn't raise my left arm more than a few inches or push or pull anything with it, and I couldn't even walk without it twingeing. On the night of the last 3 matches of the 6 Nations we planned to stay up all night to watch them all (we had missed all the others, and all of the Autumn Internationals as well); we were sitting reading in the reception/lounge area in the early hours of the morning, waiting for it to be time to go to the pub to start watching it, when the lump began to burst. I went into the toilets to clean it up, but I started feeling a bit dizzy/disorientated for some reason, and a bit sick, so I gave Dave a call. He got the medical kit, and after about three quarters of an hour of getting everything out of the lump, I cleaned it with an antiseptic wipe and he put a pad on it and bandaged it up. Already I could move my arm a lot more, and it hurt a lot less, which was a relief. It's now almost completely cleared up.