Ebook: Socialist Dreams and Beauty Queens. A Couchsurfer's Memoir of Venezuela

Couchsurfer, hitchhiker, and rogue wanderer Jamie Maslin embarks on a couchsurfing adventure to the homeland of "firebrand," "populist," "anti–American&34;# president Hugo Chavez: the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Alone in the crime capital of the world (with a murder rate higher than Iraq's), Maslin immediately finds himself in trouble arrested by knife–wielding police officers and inoculated with an unwanted vaccination. After a terrifying start in Caracas, he soon leaves the teeming city and travels to the places tourists never see, staying on the couches of people he befriended online just days earlier (www.couchsurfing.com), and meeting everyone from fervent social revolutionaries to the country's wealthy elite. He sets off in search of mile–high waterfalls, flat topped jungle plateaus, rolling deserts, and the famous lightning that appears suddenly in the sky with no rain or thunder. Visiting sprawling slums and opulent mansions, Maslin offers a...