22nd September 04 – Lima, Peru.

We arrived in Lima late last night. What a difference to Caracas. The city has a real European feel and a very mellow vibe. I automatically feel safer here, although we are told it’s almost as dangerous.

Yesterday we got our first proper look at Caracas by day. When we first came in to the city from the airport it was night time. The airport is on the beach and you go high up into the hills to reach the city. Mountains are on three sides of you and are dotted with hundreds of lights. It's a beautiful sight - a bit like the Hollywood Hills on a larger scale. On the way to the airport yesterday the daylight showed them for what they really are. The slums. Layer upon layer of small brick houses cover the mountains. Almost all of them are square and either orange or yellow. Some had two or three floors where whole levels had crumbled. None of them had windows. Most of them had walls missing. Many didn't have roofs. Washing hung everywhere surrounded by debris. It rains in Caracas every day at 4pm for about two hours.

Away from the slums the Grande Sabana area is a hustle bustle of people, litter strewn streets and huge American cars - all with blacked out windows. There are traffic jams at every time of day and I'm certain even a London black cab driver would be terrified trying to drive through them.

It definitely has a certain charm to it. I liked the sense of confusion. Unfortunately we saw little more than that. We were warned so many times by so many people in the hotel and in Los Roques not to venture out – and we were always there at night time. The hotel Savoy (a mid range budget hotel) is surrounded by a huge wall, the top of which is spiked with jagged glass. The patio area is protected by razor wire.

I still regret not seeing it properly and part of me feels like a fraud for being too yellow to explore, but when every local you meet tells you not to go anywhere in the city you have to take heed. It was the porter that morning at the hotel that freaked me. Even the locals are shitting themselves.

According to Gabriel, last weekend 108 people were killed in the city. 108 in one weekend!! It's a real shame. The Venezuelan people are some of the warmest and most polite I have ever met. There has recently been a referendum in support of Chavas – the new President. He says he’s a man of the people. The country seems quite divided over it. The rich are in a panic. It will be interesting to see whether he does anything to help the poverty situation here. Pretty much all of those murders were between gangs in the slums. It makes me think of ‘Cicada De Dio.’ The cinematography made it all look so unreal in the film, even though we knew it was based on a real place in Brazil. It’s bloody real alright. And it’s not just Brazil.