Thursday 12th October. Caracas, Venezuela.

Today is a holiday and the city is so quiet with almost no traffic. However, it also means no access to the business class lounge and so I lose all my freebies.

As I journey around the city today I see just how many posters there are for the opposition in the forthcoming (December 3rd) Presidential election. However, these are more than outnumbered by government posters and those that state that the opposition candidate Manuel Rosales is a traitor to his country.

I am to discover later today when talking to my new found friends that they do not trust the voting system. That they believe voting to be 'rigged' and that they are frightened to register a vote against the incumbent President for fear of official reprisal.

Today the taxi driver from the hotel attempts a major rip-off. When I left the hotel this morning in this official car I was told that the cost of the journey would be 20.000 bolivares, however the driver wants to extract 50.000 bolivares.

I am definitely getting back to my old self because I quite simply tell him to get me back to the hotel. He wants to negotiate enroute, I want an official from the hotel.

The Radisson dealt with him effectively, but it is a disgrace that a so-called 5* hotel puts its guests in this position. When I set out again to make my original journey the fare in a local taxi is only 15.000 bolivares.

I had intended today on visiting the Casa Natal del Libertador.

However on arrival I meet with two fine gentlemen who will be my guides to the real Caracas.

MD Golam Kawsar Sajoal is a Bangladeshi Muslim of Arab origin and his colleague Hamza is a recent convert from Catholicism of Spanish origin, originally known as Alexis Bermúdez.

Alexis is a mathematician and one of the many who is suffering under the economic crisis that grips most of Venezuela. Highly skilled yet unemployed, he speaks five languages, and like so many professional/middle-class people I have met he is scathing about government corruption. His comments are directed not just at the current administration, but at the world of politics in general and the corrupt and often oppresive way politics manifests itself in Latin America.

Alexis is conducting a tour of the city on behalf of the local mosque and I am invited to join him and his Bangladeshi guest.

Weighing the dangers of heading off with people I don't know, I judge that this situation is far less threatening than getting in a taxi in a strange country with a driver you don't know who could take you anywhere!

Travelling in our group we walk the back streets of the city and i get an idea of just how poor the vast majority of the population are. Our destination is to be the mosque which I have been invited to visit. Such an opportunity is thrilling for me.

It is an opportunity to venture off the tourist map. Further, as a former Director of Youth Ministry in the Department of Religion at the Chautauqua Institution in New York, I was witness to the outstanding eccumenical work conducted by Dr Ross Mackenzie and the department team in the area of Abrahamic Commonality long before 9/11 and our current obsession with Islam.

Indeed, the Islamic obsession is one reason why you do not feel threatened strolling the streets in such an obviously Muslim group. Those who know the religion greet you with Islam lacoom slam and everyone else clears a path and stares at my friends wondering if we are a collection of suicide bombers. Prejudice is everywhere!

The Sheikh Ibrahim Bin Abdulaziz Al-Ibrahim Mezquita is a large complex close to the museum district of the city.

Just like the synagogues I frequented in my early twenties, the women and the men are separated here with the ladies galleried above the main mosque floor. Mosques are very plain and as we disgard our shoes and step on to the carpet the first thing you notice are the thick lines spaced across the floor at regular intervals. These are simply a means of order when the mosque is busy, e.g. at Friday prayers in a way the lines act like chairs. There is no formal order of seating in a mosque, although you generally find the more senior members of the congregation kneeling nearer the front.

The Imam conducts prayers from the Mimber at the front of the Mosque and although this is a Sunni establishement local Sia Muslims also worship here.

It is very atmospheric sitting in the peace of the Mosque as a thunderstorm and heavy rains lash down outside admist the frequent bursts of lightening.

My new found friend Kawsar spends most of the day trying to convert me to Islam, and to give him his due he is very convincing. It is certainly very peaceful here in the Mosque and they make me feel very comfortable (even bringing a lawn chair for me to sit on...just like you would do for your old granny).

You cannot easily describe life on this continent unless you have experienced it for yourself. People´s outlook, their perceptions of life and what is acceptable and unacceptable (not just in their own behaviour, but in the behaviour they accept from others) is a shock to my European sensibilities. Today as I wandered the back-streets of Caracas, visited high-rise slums and saw hopelessness in peoples eyes I began to comprehend why people are driven to such extreme behaviours.

Venezuela is a very wealthy country, but the realities of corruption mean that the majority of the population live in poverty. Monthly income for many families is less than I pay for a cab ride and the people hawk literally everything and anything at street stalls just to survive.

I learn today about the realities of Burrundanga. This is a drug that is commonly used to paralyse victims of muggings. A few drops of Burrundanga on a piece of paper, on your skin, blown into your face and you are an easy target.

I am shown how you can paralyse a victim by shaking their hand; or blowing some of the drug from atop your mobile phone into the victims face; or from placing a friendly arm around the victim and rubbing the drug on the skin; or from offering some reading material that is coated with the substance. The list is endless of ways in which the mugger can transfer the drug to the prospective victim and the use of Burrundanga is wide spread in Venezuela.

Like so many people I have watched life in the developing world from afar; yet to see it up close is a genuinely life-changing experience.

The apartment Alexis lives in reminded me so much of those bombed out apartment blocks we see on TV in the Lebanon (pre bombing, of course).

You enter a rather stark 1970´s style hallway; the floor and the walls covered in that yellow coloured material that is speckled like formica. The entrance is guarded by a large metal grill and the elevator has seen much better days. When we reach the 22nd floor we embark into a narrow hall with apartments all behind barricaded doorways.

Once inside the apartment I am amazed that the windows (even at this height) are barred. I grew-up in a high rise apartment and we did not even have a security door on the main entrance.

The first thing you do once inside is ensure that you shut the security door. It reminds me of a cell door from a prison. The apartment is full to bursting with ancient furnishings, out-dated media equipment and it affords the visitor a dank mood of depression.

I would love to have taken photographs both of the inside of the apartment and of the cell like security. However, this would be very rude. I am a guest in someone´s home but I do ask and do take photographs out over the neighbourhood from the small apartment balcony.

Hollywood could not have built a better set if they were trying to show the despair, isolation and social agression that certain commentators believe are intrinsically linked to high-rise living.

Today´s insight into the culture of Venezuela could have been very dangerous for me. Caracas is famed for being the least secure city in Venezuela. It is a city of petty crime, robbery and it specialises in armed assaults at all times of day and night.

However, in many ways I am here as an investigative journalist and I have to take calculated risks.

In all my travels on this continent I have been acutely aware of danger and indeed my negative experience occurred on an occasion when control of my surroundings was not within my power.

Before travelling to South America I thought I was street-wise. After all I lived 4 years in South London; I have travelled the globe (except for the two most dangerous of continents - South America and Africa); I have worked in the United States; walked the streets of NYC and Chicago on my own and in the wee small hours, and frequently. I grew up on a tough council estate in Scotland...Nothing and I mean Nothing prepares you for the differences that are evident in South America.

This after all is a continent where you can have someone killed for just a few dollars. Life has little value.

Alexis was telling me about being robbed by the police and the fact that if he was walking down the street and saw a group of 20 would be attackers and two policemen on the other side of the road; he would rather take his chances passing through the group of men.

He was telling me that when a previous visitor went to the police to report a mugging he was asked if he had anything left after the attack. The policeman then proceeded to rob him again.

My risks, like all travellers, need to be weighed. I am just as likely to be hijacked in a cab in this city (frequent attacks on visitors are common where you are driven to a location robbed and then abandoned). Today I have been very lucky to gain a first hand insight, and a direct stroll through the back-streets of the city.

I am glad I have had this exposure, but I am also glad that we are now dining in an Arab restaurant (there is a large Arab population in Caracas) and that I will get back to the hotel before nightfall.

...Spoke too soon. The cab driver has decided part way through the journey that he is no longer willing to drive us? We are turfed out and Alexis has to head on the long road back to Central Caracas. I have a short walk across a couple of highways, but I can see my hotel in the distance.

I am continually learning that like a good boy scout, you need to be prepared. Everyone I pass ignores me as I am carrying nothing and wearing old clothes and flip-flops...I just look poor and not worth bothering with...Thank God!