Eh, it's completely up to you.
Xleena said that "night" would come when she was finished with her three weeks of exams, which means if you actually count 21 days from when she said that, "night" would come on or around the 29th.
So you won't have too much longer to explore if that's what you choose, unless you wouldn't plan on coming back to the ruby tree.
It's obvious that the group won't be doing any exploring since we're too busy explaining things.
Asia, is your character clamping onto Dwayne or someone else? Just want to be sure because there's more than one "cat" around. haha.