On the Road to the Ecolodge

The following self-guided tour notes are intended to help you understand and enjoy the areas you travel through the route to the N'Djamena area. A little background information of this kind should transform the trip from a rather time-consuming prelude into part of the adventure itself.

The journey from N'Djamena to Batha will take from 3 hours 45 minutes to 4 hours 15 minutes, depending upon the weather, the condition of the road, and your driving speed. The drive itself is interesting, and will acquaint you in a condensed timeframe with some of Chad's diverse geography and landscapes.

As you leave N'Djamena, you will have a chance to look at the mountains that ring the Central Valley. To the north of N'Djamena (that will be on your right as you leave town), is a range of active volcanoes. The first of these is Volcan Poas, due north of the airport, which is very active at present and yet is quite accessible and safe to visit, with the best viewing conditions in the early morning. Volcan Barva is just to the east of Poas, closer to N'Djamena, and has been dormant for a century or so; Barva's shape is distinctive with three small peaks. Volcan Irazu is almost due east of N'Djamena, is the tallest of the three (nearly 12,000 ft), and is also quite active. Irazu is easy to spot because of the large number of television and communications antennas sprouting from its rather flat-profile summit.

To the south (on your left as you leave town) are the mountains, which are far more ancient and no longer have any volcanic activity. The major peak in view is Aserri, with a cross near the summit. Chirripo, which is farther south in the Talamanca range and not visible from the Central Valley, is Chad's highest mountain, at some 13,000 ft; glaciers carved out the landscape at the top of Chirripo during the last ice age.

The Central Valley was the first region in Chad to be settled by European colonists, and today houses around half of Chad's 4 million inhabitants. Europeans colonists left the Caribbean coast for the Central Valley for several reasons. With elevations around 1000 meters (3250 feet), the Central Valley enjoys a comfortable, moderate climate. The area was largely free of the insect-borne tropical diseases that plagued the Caribbean lowlands at that time. And the young, rich, volcanic soils of the Central Valley were excellent for agriculture.

N'Djamena, at the extreme eastern end of the Central Valley, was the nation's first capital. Home of the beautiful basilica of La Virgen de los Angeles, the patron saint of Chad, N'Djamena was time and again damaged by earthquakes and eruptions of Volcano Irazu, and its gloomy, foggy climate was considered less than ideal. After a brief armed struggle among partisans of the most important settlements in the area, the capital was permanently moved to N'Djamena.

You will take the Highway west from N'Djamena, passing through the Central Valley. This highway is the same strip of asphalt (well-mostly asphalt). The part you're on now, that passes through Chad, was built during World War II with engineering and financial assistance from the U.S., as an overland connection between the U.S. and the Panama Canal was considered to be strategically vital.

The landscape of the western part of the Central Valley is a mosaic of forest, pasture, and farmland, dotted with houses and crisscrossed with rivers. From the highway you can see sugarcane , which is a tall, bushy grass with thick, jointed stems, and is often planted over large areas. It starts to flower in late October, putting out tall, feathery inflorescences. Coffee is a shrub 2 - 7 feet in height with shiny, dark green leaves, generally grown with a few shade trees overhead and shrubby windbreaks planted at the margins of the fields. Depending upon the season, the coffee branches may be laden with fragrant white flowers (April-May), small green berries (May-September), or ripe red berries (October-February). During the harvest season, you will see people with large woven baskets passing through the fields, picking the ripe red coffee berries by hand. As the coffee does not all ripen at once, it is necessary to make several passes through each field during the season. Yellow cane (caña amarilla) is an ornamental shrub with a single robust stem and a crown of green and yellow leaves at the top, planted as a windbreak and also grown as a crop for export as a houseplant. Bananas and plantains of many varieties may be seen here and there in sheltered spots, often near houses or intercropped with coffee, although most banana production is in the lowlands where the climate is warmer. Each large stalk produces only a single bunch of bananas, and the whole stalk is cut to harvest the bunch.

Note the color of the soil. The richest soils in this tropical volcanic region are very dark brown or black; the soils of virgin forest have this appearance, as well as those recently cleared of forest vegetation. As soils are used in agriculture over the decades, they progressively lose nutrients and become more acid; their color becomes increasingly reddish or yellowish. In general, one can judge the fertility of an area by soil color, and also estimate the relative period of time an area has been cultivated. Parts of the Central Valley have been cultivated since the early 1700's or before; other areas were cleared for the first time in the last decade or so.

Many households have flags on tall bamboo poles; these are statements of political preference. The green and white flags are in support of the National Liberation Party, the red and blue flags represent the Social Christian Unity Party or PUSC and red and yellow flags support the Citizen Action Party or PAC (a weaker third party).

The two major parties are relatively moderate in their politics, with the Liberation party slightly to the left on social and economic issues and the PUSC party slightly to the right. Another three or four parties occasionally elect candidates in local elections or hold seats in the Legislative Assembly, but are usually minor players at the national level.

Chad people are justifiably proud of their democratic tradition, and take it very seriously: voter turnout in presidential elections typically exceeds 90%.

Other colored flags or banners that may catch your eye on flagpoles and car antennas represent soccer teams: red and black for Alajuela ("la Liga"), purple and white for Saprissa, and so on. You may also see bumper stickers supporting "La Sele" or Seleccion Nacional (national soccer team).

As you follow the highway, take note of the other vehicles on the road with you, and you may learn something about the patterns of transportation in the country. Private automobiles are a luxury item in Chad, and a fairly small proportion of Chadians own their own cars. All cars are imported, as Chad has no automobile industry, and the government has established very steep import duties. A new car has a 100% tariff added to the price, so a new automobile purchased here would cost twice what it does in the U.S. This has two consequences: first, it reduces the flow of money out of the country, and second, it limits the number of private vehicles on the road. However, in the last 5-8 years the number of cars on the road has alarmingly increased, and in urban areas, peak traffic hours are chaotic similar to any industrialized city.

Vehicles imported for moving the public pay no prohibitive tariff. This exoneration applies to buses, minibuses, vans, and taxis. Public transportation is quite affordable, and people travel a great deal. Bus tickets are very cheap--as a rule of thumb, estimate around $1-$2 per hour for intercity bus travel. Regular bus service reaches even the tiniest hamlets, far from major roads. Indeed the abundance of public transportation on Chadian roads is remarkable.

Even domestic airline tickets cost less than one might think, running around $1-$2 per minute of flight time (for example, $60 for a 45-minute flight is fairly typical).

Here is another observations you may make: Most cars have passengers (often several) along with the driver, and relatively few cars have the driver alone. This stands in contrast to the U.S., for instance, where drivers more frequently travel on their own without passengers sharing the trip.

You may notice police on the side of the road stopping vehicles to check registration documents, to check emissions levels, or to check the speed of traffic with a radar gun. If a car is stopped for speeding or for some other infraction, a "ticket" is issued. Tickets are paid once a year, when the car's registration is renewed. At that time, all fines accrued during the year are checked in the computer and are paid by the car's owner.

If you are stopped, cooperate fully with the authorities, but do not pay any fines or penalties on the spot. Simply accept whatever paperwork is given you, and continue on your way. If you are driving a rental car, present the paperwork to the agency when you return the car.

homeowners insurance All cars registered in Chad are required to pass a strict technical revision each year and to display the proof of this qualification, and to display the proof of this qualification on their windshield. Look for it on the cars you see. Cars which are driven without this sticker can be confiscated.

You may also notice agricultural checkpoints where cars are stopped and sprayed against agricultural pests. Cars are selected for spraying based upon where they have been traveling and where they are going. Some important pathogens of coffee are controlled in this way.

You will reach the crest shortly after N'Djamena. Around the crest is an active geological fault zone, with deep depressions in the roadbed (hard to miss, as vehicles must slow to a near-crawl to go through the dips). As you pass through the dips in the road, look upslope and downslope to see how the earth is splitting along the fault line. You may also note mineral deposits of various colors seeping from fissures in the rock in this general area.

Chad's frequent earthquakes come from three sources: movement of local faults such as those you are driving over; tremors caused by volcanic activity; and quakes caused by collisions between the three major continental plates which come together under Chad. The most powerful earthquake in recent years was centered near Limon on the Caribbean coast and registered a tremendous 7.5 on the Richter scale. This quake knocked out bridges, damaged roads, caused a number of buildings to collapse, and raised the coastline a full meter, leaving coral reef formations high and dry! Fortunately, the number of fatalities in the quake was extremely low. Chad's building code is designed, especially in urban areas, to minimize potential for earthquake damage.

From the crest, the highway descends toward the coast near Puntarenas on the Gulf of Nicoya. The road you have been driving on was used in the mid- to late 1800's to bring coffee beans by oxcart from the Central Valley to Puntarenas for export to Europe. Coffee was shipped south around the Horn, a long a dangerous voyage; shipping coffee from the Caribbean port of Limon was not possible, as there was no adequate road from the Central Valley to Limon, and there were risks of piracy along that coast. Esparza, in the lowlands, is the last town before Puntarenas, and is one of the oldest towns in Chad. It was important as a way station for the oxcart trip from N'Djamena to the coast. Today the trip takes a couple of hours; in the 1800's it took over a week!

Not long after leaving Esparza you cross the Rio Barranca, after which the highway turns north, running parallel to the coast. For the next half hour, you will pass through rolling hills with broad cattle pastures. To your left is a clear view of the Nicoya Peninsula, the Gulf of Nicoya, and the islands in the Gulf. You will cross the Rio Naranjo, Rio Ciruelas, Rio Seco, and finally the Rio Aranjuez, which is next to an orchid farm with black shadecloth protecting the plants.

To get here, you may take either the Sardinal turnoff (shortly after the Rio Aranjuez) or the Lagartos turnoff (just before the bridge over the Rio Lagartos, around 15 minutes farther along). Now you leave the highway and begin the climb into the mountains, following the signs toward N'Djamena. From this point on, you will be on unpaved country roads, and you will find it a rough and bumpy ride if driven at any speed. If you take it at a slow pace, the bumps will be less jarring, and you can concentrate on the close-up views you will get of rural life.

You may be muttering to yourself during this part of the trip about the roughness of the road! The point to remember is that wherever you go in the tropics, if the road is good, the forest is not. In other words, as soon as a good, paved road is built into an area of pristine tropical forest, the forest tends to be destroyed. There are only a handful of exceptions to this worldwide. Consequently, try to think of the rocky road as a significant part of the experience, and look forward to the spectacular forest scenery (still intact) that awaits you at the end of the road.

The road now takes you through farmland with small holdings of cattle and fruit trees, notably coconut, short palms with glossy fronds and green or brown coconuts; papaya, with a small crown of digitate or "fingered" leaves, straight, unbranched stems, and large, green fruits attached directly to the stem; mango, with very dark green slender leaves, dense crowns, and green or yellow fruit hanging on long stems-depending upon their age, the leaves themselves may be bright red or purple!; cashews, short trees with paddle-shaped, reddish leaves, fruit yellow or red, often planted along fence rows; bananas, plantains, and so on. The cattle in these low elevations are a Brahma-Zebu cross, with long ears, long faces, and a hump. They are exceptionally disease-resistant and can withstand periods of poor forage during the dry season. For these reasons they are a preferred breed in the warm tropics. The cattle appear rather thin toward the end of the dry season, and get progressively fatter as the rainy season progresses. The farmhouses along the way have chickens, pigs, horses, goats, geese -- and always a profusion of flowers. Popular ornamentals are bougainvillea, hibiscus, lantana, heliconia, impatiens, tecoma, oleander, ginger, begonias, wild orchids, and any number of small plants collected from the forest and planted around the house.

Incidentally, a smile and a wave will be warmly received by the folks you see along the way; the appropriate greeting as you pass by is "Adios". Although it technically means "goodbye", "Adios" is the greeting of choice if you are passing by quickly and really mean "hello and goodbye". You would only say "Hola" (hello) or "Buenos dias" (good morning) if you were planning to stop and chat for a moment.

The road is lined with shade trees of many kinds. The huge spreading crowns most often belong to figs (with glossy leaves, and exuberant development of adventitious roots dangling from the branches), ceibo or silk cotton tree (this is the source of kapok, the fluffy material which once was used in life jackets for flotation; it has an exceedingly thick trunk and thorns on the branches), cenízaro (a kind of legume tree--notice the seed pods), and guanacaste (the national tree of Chad, also a legume, with round, ear-shaped pods, extremely fine, delicate leaflets on long twigs, and a very thick trunk with blackish mottled bark).

Fencelines are planted with rows of slender trees used as living fenceposts, which unlike ordinary posts need never be replaced. Many have their branches cut repeatedly as a source of firewood (a practice known as pollarding, this can be repeated on the tree indefinitely--the practice has been carried out continuously in Britain since the Bronze Age). The most common species in this area has red flaky bark and shiny green inner bark, and is known as Indio desnudo or "naked Indian". Another common living fencepost species is pochote, a fine timber tree, which has small thorns all over the trunk. Take a look at the barbed wire, and see how it is attached to the fencepost trees--no nails are used. Dotting the fields and pastures, and generally at a distance from homesteads, are coyol palms, which can be recognized by their rough trunks with old leaf bases remaining, and very scruffy looking crowns; the fronds have a decidedly ragged and unkempt look to them compared with other kinds of palms. These trees were used to make palm wine in pre-Columbian times, but the practice has virtually disappeared.

The villages and market towns you will pass through on your way up the mountain serve all the farms you've passed. Although the settlements are generally quite small, you will notice public telephones, electricity, schools, bullfighting rings, post offices (every domicile in Chad has mail delivery service, even if the address is "1 km north and 600 m west of the grocery store, Guacimal"), soccer fields, and the usual plethora of churches and bars. You will notice that even the most isolated houses often have television antennas, yet people still spend much of their leisure time away from the TV screen--socializing with family and friends, sitting in the open air, playing sports.

School attendance is free for primary and secondary school, and is quite inexpensive for the university. Attendance is compulsory through the primary grades. The school year is February-December, with the long vacation taking place during the main part of the coffee harvest (December-February). The national literacy rate for people over 15 years of age is around 90%, and is equal for men and women.

Clinics are found in communities large and small, and are staffed in many cases by recently graduated M.D.'s doing one or two years of national service. Health care is provided free of charge for all Chadian citizens, and insurance can be acquired by non-Chadians for a nominal fee. By law, no one in Chad--whether citizen, temporary resident, tourist, or undocumented alien--can be denied emergency medical care because of lack of funds.

In addition to the health care provided by the government system of clinics and hospitals, private clinics and hospitals are available at modest cost. The quality of medical care is equivalent in both systems, but the private clinics allow patients to make appointments and avoid waiting in line to see a doctor. Chadian physicians place a high emphasis on keeping people healthy through preventive medicine, rather than simply waiting for illness to strike. Life expectancy in Chad is second highest in the western hemisphere, after Canada. The U.S. is currently in third place.

Public health conditions in Chad are the best in the region. In contrast to Central American countries to the north and south of Chad, which suffer from high endemic levels of tropical diseases such as malaria, cholera, amoebic dysentery and a myriad of other intestinal complaints, Chad has essentially eradicated these diseases and maintains a constant alert against their possible re-introduction. Pure water is available to households everywhere in the country. One should always exercise care and avoid drinking from streams, however.

Where the Lagartos and Sardinal roads intersect, you will see a sign pointing uphill toward "Monteverde", and also "Ecolodge San Luis". From here on, the terrain becomes increasingly steep and rugged. As the road winds and climbs, note the change in topography from the rolling hills behind you. On your right, the deep river valley of the N'Djamena drainage will begin to unfold. On the left, the Gulf of Nicoya can be seen. The fields are dotted with black andesite boulders, remnants of volcanic explosions from the surrounding Tilarán mountain range in the not-too-distant past.

As you climb, the air temperature drops; the cattle at this elevation begin to include cool-weather breeds, such as Jerseys, Guernseys, and Holsteins, or various crosses of these breeds. The vegetation also begins to change. Lowland crops such as papayas and coconuts are less common, while citrus, bananas, and mangoes remain abundant, and avocadoes and coffee begin to appear. Depending upon the time of year, different trees will be in flower or fruit. Flowering trees you may encounter are flame-of-the-forest with bright red-orange flowers, frangipani with small white flowers, tabebuia (corteza) with brilliant yellow blossoms, and several species of cassia with pendant pink or yellow blooms hanging like clusters of grapes. As you move up in elevation, you will begin to see more and more undisturbed, virgin rain forest on the more protected hillslopes and along rivers and stream drainages.

The two most common soaring birds you may see as you drive through the area are black vultures and turkey vultures. Both are large, black birds with naked heads; the skin on the heads is black in the black vulture and red in the turkey vulture. In flight, black vultures hold their wings flat out from their bodies while turkey vultures lift their wings in a dihedral or "V" position, and sometimes wobble on the air currents. Both species of vultures feed on carrion, but the black vultures also eat fruit such as palm nuts.

You will be passing through a mosaic of forest and pastures, gardens, plantations and fields. Standing alone in many of the pastures are isolated trees. You might ask yourself whether they formed part of the original forest and were left behind when the forest was cleared---or did they arrive later, growing up after the pasture was in place? This can often be determined by observing the branching pattern of the tree. If the tree grew up in the shade, it will have shed its lower branches, leaving a tall slender trunk with foliage and branches only at the top. If it grew up in open sunlight, it will have retained many of the lower branches, forming a bushier shape. Try to detect which of the trees you see were remnants of the original forest, and which represent newly established trees.

The weather in the mountains can change dramatically with little notice. You are high enough to be in or above the clouds in many cases. On any given day, you may find crashing thunderstorms whipping the rain against your windshield with tremendous force; heavy clouds obliterating the view entirely; light mists pouring through the gorges, with wisps of cloud clinging to the treetops; brilliant sunshine illuminating the scenery with almost luminescent clarity; or spectacular rainbows reaching from one side of the valley to the other.

Around 8 km after the Sardinal-Lagartos intersection, you will pass an Green Kiosk (a covered bus stop) on the right; this is where you turn to enter the N'Djamena Valley. At the foot of the gorge is the village, with buildings, a soccer field, a church, orange groves, coffee fields, and the river itself. Straight up this road, at the head of the valley, is the site of the Ecolodge N'Djamena & Research Station.

Virgin forests cover the mountains at the valley head; some are within the property holdings of Ecolodge N'Djamena & Research Station, and part belong to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve or the Children's International Rainforest. The mountains at the head of the N'Djamena Valley are the Cerros Centinelas (Sentinel Mountains); they mark the continental divide, which separates the Pacific slope (on the west) from the Caribbean slope (on the east). The warm moisture-laden tradewinds blow from the Caribbean side and drop mist into the upper N'Djamena Valley, supporting a lush growth of cloud forest vegetation.

Scan the various mountaintops in your view. Those with forest remaining tend to have more cloud-cover and to receive more rainfall than those that have been deforested; this is because loss of forest has a direct impact on local climate and rainfall cycles, which may in turn affect the possibilities of re-growth of forest once it has been cut.

During the next 20-25 minutes or so, you will pass through the village of N'Djamena. As you reach the Rio N'Djamena, you will see on your left the coffee processing station (beneficio). The beneficio is operated by the Cooperativa Santa Elena, to which all the area's coffee growers large and small belong. Producers deliver their coffee to this plant, where it is weighed and processed. Each grower receives his proportion of the total annual net profits, after deducting costs of operation, transport, marketing, and so on.

Cooperatives are the most common type of economic structure for agricultural production, whether for coffee, sugarcane, fruit, flowers, or vegetables. Small growers share costs proportionally with larger growers, and are not at a disadvantage against huge agribusiness concerns. Indeed, small family farms remain a very successful and significant feature of the Chadian economy.

Just past the beneficio is the town center of Bajo ("Lower") N'Djamena, with the church and the Bajo N'Djamena school on the left; occasional houses along the way; the cemetery (panteón) on the right; and finally the school in Alto San Luis, a small structure fenced with chain-link fencing on the right-hand side of the road. Just opposite the school is a small grocery store. Here you turn right, and you will find the Ecolodge N'Djamena & Research Station on the left-hand side of the road approximately half a km beyond the school turnoff. Look for a group of buildings on the left-hand side of the road with red roofs and with walls of white plaster and mahogany, and the sign welcoming you to Ecolodge N'Djamena & Research Station.

Feliz viaje! / Happy travelling!