CARACAS --I don't like arriving in a new city early in the morning. You and the city are both still groggy, exposed; the pulse-racing anticipation of discovery is deadened by the overnight flight. It's like agreeing to go on a first date at 6 a.m. No, I'd rather make my first landing at night, when the shimmering lights only hint at what is soon to be unveiled.

Be that as it may, Amanda and I found ourselves stumbling through immigration in the Caracas airport as the city was coming to life, greeted by the massive slogan "Construyendo el Socialismo Bolivariano" ("Building Bolivarian Socialism"). The first sign that President Hugo Chavez's paradise is a slightly dysfunctional work in progress is the number of fixers that descend upon you as you emerge from customs, most of them wanting to change money. Venezuela has an official exchange rate, set by the government, in the neighbourhood of 2,000 bolivares to the dollar, a rate that is more aspirational than real. On the street, people are eager to give you between 4,000 and 6,000 bolivares to the dollar. (Following in the footsteps of plenty of other nations that have run their currencies into the ground, on the first day of 2008 Venezuela introduced the "bolivar fuerte," knocking three zeroes off the old currency.)