That´s what my home city of Swansea was once called and it´s an apt description of Caracas I´d say, although Swansea is a lot prettier. I flew into Caracas, after a one hour stop in Colombia, got my backpack and rode an expensive taxi into the city centre after dark. Caracas is a kind of edgy, freaky, bustling, modern, dirty, loud and dangerous city that probably deserves its reputation - though you´ll be OK if you use common sense and take the usual precautions of not going certain places after dark and not flashing your swanky Ipod and new camera around. It is like most big Latin American capital cities with salsa and hip-hop music absolutley blasting through the gleaming speaker systems of cars and buses lurching their way through the city centre at all
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