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2004-06-14 - 4:21 p.m.

�I�m just back from Venezuela.�

�Caracas?�

�Yes, it was absolutely fucking mental��

Ah, the old ones are the oldest. As long weekend destinations go, Venezuela isn�t the most relaxing, unless you live in, say, Venezuela, or in fact anywhere closer than London.

Since our flight was at a time when even the larks were just staring bleary-eyed at their alarm clocks and having another five minute�s kip, I stayed at an airport hotel. Airport hotels are basically just extensions of airport departure lounges, where all the flights are delayed for at least the next twelve hours and aggressive consumption of alcohol is the activity of choice. No-one wants to be there, least of all the staff, and because the guests are only there for one night, levels of customer service rank somewhere on a par with Guantanamo Bay.

In Caracas, everyone is very friendly and insists on telling you how famous they are for their beautiful women, mostly as a way of distracting you from their beautiful kidnapping rates and beautiful sprawling slums. That said, we were taken to a club on our first night which must have been hosting a graduating class of Hispanic supermodels � just being in the same room made me feel like the pasty, out of shape toad that I coincidentally am, and my hapless confusion about public displays of rhythm didn�t help either.

Day two was the rum plantation. My expertise on the subject of rum can be summed up by the fact that until very recently, I�m ashamed to admit that I thought the first name of the person who owned Bacardi was Ron. The reference to Ron Bacardi on the bottle is, of course, just a translation of Bacardi Rum�I�m just glad my dimwittedness had been exposed before we got there.

We tasted a lot of rum samples, including some raw alcohol coming in at 55 per cent, which thankfully stripped the nerves from my tongue before we tried the recently distilled 65 per cent stuff. The hacienda was wonderful, though sadly we were told early on that we couldn�t stay the night there. Our hosts were being evasive about where we would be staying:

Me: Is our hotel tonight nice?

Them: It�s very near.

No surprise, then, that we end up in a rancid fleapit with prison showers.

The next day, though, we took a lovely old prop plane into the national park, and I felt like Indiana Jones except with a worse hangover. We did a couple of excursions into the most incredible rocky landscape, and my new favourite activity is exploring waterfalls. You can do a lot of that there � looking at waterfalls, climbing waterfalls, sitting under waterfalls, walking behind waterfalls, ill-advisedly opening your mouth to try and catch the water from waterfalls, coughing into waterfalls, that kind of thing. Even for a committed anti-nature activist like me, it was pretty special. Sadly, our dribbling shower at home isn�t really capturing the aquatic exhilaration, but it�s the best I�ve got for now.

Our tour guide was, as usual, a complete lunatic. A short fat woman who screamed at us all the time not to touch the jungle, and then pointing out venomous animals via the means of poking them with a stick as we tried to step over them. She rugby-Tackled us into freezing pools and tried to feed us ants (�Tastes like coconut!�), which some of the party agreed to, despite the reality of the buffet dinner waiting for us back at the lodge. Sorry lady, I�m only going to eat bugs for survival or financial gain � if God had wanted us to chow down on insects, he wouldn�t have given us takeaway pizza.

Back at diner she kept up her rabid enthusiasm, accompanying me down the buffet line, babbling all the time and naming for me even the most identifiable food � �chicken!�, �tomato!� � like I�m recovering from some kind of debilitating brain disease and need to be told what basic foodstuffs are.

Anyway, after some more quality waterfall time, getting pecked by parrots and looking at a wild boar in a pit, we headed back to the city, taking in the Angel Falls, the tallest in the world and a resource that even made the Venezuelans shut up about their beautiful women for a few minutes.

And now back in north London, where it�s surprisingly hot and we lost a football match, so hooray / boo hiss to whatever degree you find appropriate.

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