All sizes of stones - and no riding possible..

Four days ago we were recommended to change to "nobbi" tires - if we have some of those. I do not - so I hoped to menage on the gravel that was predicted for a great deal of the day. And I actually did. Must admit that I several times thought that this is just over the top. We had all size of stones - and very little asphalt for hours and hours.. But we went through beautiful tea growing areas - so at least  there was something to make justice to the route.. I planned to ride with the girls: Jacqueline from Melbourne and Rosie from England/Sydney. I quickly found out that they both actually do not like the mountain bike kind of riding that is demanded for the gravel and quite some time opted for walking both up and down the thing. Not agreeing about this I did go somewhat faster and went quite some ahead of them. There I met Joachim from Stuttgart who I often do pictures with. He takes photos of me and I of him - so we ended up having a great photo session with some really friendly tee plucking people. There was a nice decent on normal asphalt before lunch, where we got to know about change of directions.. The very long afternoon had been cut by about 30 k's - and our tour leader Christiano meant that we would give him a hug because of this.. Well, well - he actually made me furious instead.. After going down a very steep and rugged road there was another crazy climb - actually crazy to a degree that nobody could ride it. I even had problems pushing my bike up to the top where there was a security check. It appeared to be an area with a large geo hydro plant owned by Chevron. We had got special permission to go through there not until the same morning - quite interesting to see. Going down again there was a wonderful and very long descent to a nice hotel where we had our rest day. All water there came out of hot springs - so I spent an hour or so sitting at the jets and the pool with the local guests of the hotel - I was the only one in a swimsuit. Felt that the water did me well - very relaxing!