The weather in Cairns was very touch and go, it rained almost every day so was really unpredictable as to what we could book in terms of trips etc. We also had further problems with Candy's teeth, this time one on the opposite side. We made another trip to the dentist as it was getting really painful and obviously didn't want to take any chances. We saw the same dentist who took an x-ray of the tooth and then came the bad news... basically, the root of the tooth was extremely inflammed and needed to have a root canal performed. This would cost somewhere in the region of $1500. Something that no one can budget for and certainly not the kind of extra money either of us had spare. The dentist himself couldn't perform the root canal as it was too intricate, but there was someone at the practice who could do it, he was only in selected days of the week though and was only qualified in India, not Australia, so this made us very dubious. The dentist suggested we fly home to get the root canal performed as it is so much cheaper in the UK, again, this wasn't really an option as flying home would cost money too. And not only that, we still had 3 months to go of our adventure, we didn't want it to be cut so short. The main thing was sorting the tooth out though because of the pain, we said we'd have to go away and think about it.

After much deliberating, we decided that we would hold out until we got to Melbourne where Candy would get a second opinion about the tooth. Our insurance would not pay out any more than 500 UK pounds and Candy had already had to pay out around 270 pounds for the first filling, meaning that they wouldn't cover much, if anything at all as it's a seperate claim. We've paid for the highest incurance policy avaialble and so far, have found they will pay out for very little. What's the point in having insurance when you can't claim anything? There's always a loophole! But anyway, Candy said she could hold out with the tooth for the time being. We would wait until Melbourne to see what our options were. If the root canal had to be performed, there was a strong possibility we would have to come home. Which is why that second opinion was so important, we wanted to make sure we'd got all the facts before we made such an important decision.

We made a friend at our hostel - "Yeah, Jackie". Not a human friend, but you should know that by now. We broke the trend though, it wasn't a cat this time either. It was a tiny tiny gheko that would hangout outside our room every night (we don't know where he went during the day) But every night, he was keeping guard at our door. Yes, we just said 'he'. Candy decided to call him Yeah Jackie, if anyone has seen the Celebrity Big Brother with Sylvester Stallone's mum then you'll understand, when she entered the house she responded to Bridget Nelson's reaction by saying "Yeah, Jackie". Emma doesn't even really understand how that relates to a lizard, but nonetheless, that became his name!

In the end, we ended up staying in Cairns for the full 2 weeks. We didn't want to risk going to Port Douglas as there were reports of a cyclone heading our way and the last thing we wanted was to end up stranded there and not be able to get back to Cairns for our flight on the 26th. We just spent our time chilling out and sunbathing (when the weather was good) which it was during the second week. There was two days when it just rained non stop and during this time we had to make a ten minute walk to the doctors, to say we got a bit wet would be an understatement! Candy had to go there as she's been feeling sick and dizzy. Sure enough the doctor said she had a viral infection in her ears, explaining why she'd been feeling dizzy. As it was a viral infection though, he couldn't give antibiotics so she just had to take some anti-sickness tablets. It was happening with Candy's health in Cairns! But that meant it was good just to have a chilled out two weeks, so we could just relax and re-cooperate before our tour in Alice Springs. And we would definately need our strength for that...