Welcome to The Jungle

So the inevitable has happened, admittedly a little bit quicker than I had expected, but still it happened. Shortly after writing my last post I walked up what was apparantly a bad street. A man approached me, shook my hand, dragged me closer to him and then tought me my new spanish word of the day: "Pistola," whilst lifting his t-shirt up revealing the but of a hand-gud poking out from the top of his boxer-shorts. He tried to grab my bag, but when I showed him the contents (Two books and a bottle of water) he changed his mind. his attention now shifted to a mobile-phone and I told him I didn´t have one but decided to show him my wallet before he would start searching me and find my secret cash-stash or worse my camera. He grabbed the wad of money (mostly small bills making it feel like more than it was) gave me the evil eye and walked off. This was at half past three, broad daylight, less than 20 hours into my trip (12 hours were spent sleeping) perhaps proving to me that the facts, statistics and stories I've been told about Venezuela aren't that exaggerated. Otherwise the little I saw of Caracas seemed allright, it must be one of the most integrated communities I have ever seen, blacks, whites and natives mixing without any problems as far as I can see, just agreeing on one thing to dislike the "gringo." I´ve seen enough Western films to recognise the "We-don't-take-kindly-to-your-type" look I get from many people often accompanied by jeers of "¡Ey Gringo!" They are definitely not all like this though as I have also met many extremly friendly and helpful people here. One thing that strikes you when you come to Caracas is their love for baseball and from what I've understood there are two main teams "The Leones" and "Magallanes" every man seems to wear at least one piece of clothing showing off the love for one of these teams. Another thing that can't escape the eye is the size of women's breasts and how they like to flaunt them, either plastic surgery is very cheap here or this is one blessed population. Anywhoo I've left Caracas now and reached the small coastal town of Coroni, but that will have to wait until the next chapter of this magical tale.