The best way to discover Caracas is to leave the city at the crack of dawn without looking back - and preferably armed. Stop at the entrance to the Avila national park, climb the steep hillside and take a deep breath.

The silent, waking city lies below, cloaked in mist, a monster in gentle repose, while parakeets chatter in the nearby bushes. Joggers and walkers smile and nod to each other, enjoying a brief truce from the stressful pace below.

"Anyone who knows Caracas," wrote Sergio Ramirez, a Nicaraguan writer, "knows that in Venezuela time doesn't exist." Sound advice which I ignored to my peril. Interviews were casually postponed for an hour or two without so much as a blush.

When you do get to meet people, expect surprises. Inside government buildings I met Norma, a congressional secretary on loan to the new National Assembly elected last July to rewrite the country's constitution.

A middle-aged woman with a leopardskin shirt and a piercing gaze, she combines her secretarial duties with PR work for her homemade herbal remedies. She produced two bottles, one of them a perfumed insect repellent, the other a liquid for fighting baldness. I wouldn't have minded but I was wearing a hat at the time.

In a shanty overlooking the city, I had a very different kind of encounter with strange substances. In a cafe on the corner of Plaza Pastora, Luis slugged down the coffee I offered him, turning serious for a minute: "This city isn't safe, you could be shot on the street any time."

The advice came from a good source, as Luis is a former armed robber turned crack cocaine dealer. In the good old days, Luis would leave his small cinder block home each morning and cross the city, holding up wealthy people in the posh Chacaito district, right where this reporter is lodged at the moment.

"There is no work, no money, no hope," he said, with a dramatic wave of his arm. Luis (32), lives with his mother and sister, who have joined one of the rapidly-expanding evangelical churches in the city.

The repentant gangster tried to slip a tinfoil package into my hand, containing basuco, a cheap and dangerous version of crack cocaine, favoured by impoverished addicts. It was a polite gesture, a personal calling card.

Luis was 12 years old when curiosity got the better of him. Three years later the law got the better of him and he went down for 12 years, dedicating his increased spare time to basketball and study.

"I passed fifth grade," he said proudly, his grin revealing a degree of toothless wreckage. Two months ago his 15-year-old nephew was shot dead in a drug feud, a footnote in the press, saturated with stories of murder and robbery.

President Hugo Chavez, elected on an ambitious platform to reconstruct the nation, has an uphill battle ahead. "He sounds decent," said Luis, "but he won't be able to do anything."

MEANWHILE, just a few miles away, on another planet, Nielkis Ramirez, a young actress, expressed horror at the rise of Mr Chavez as she queued for a ballet performance. "I left my house and took the dog for a walk last week," she said, "when a guy suddenly appeared and waved a gun at me."

I thought of Luis.

"It's Chavez's fault, he keeps riling up the poor with those ridiculous speeches," she said. "There is going to be a civil war," added her friend Paula, sounding terrified.

That night I watched one of the president's "ridiculous" speeches in a popular restaurant, as he outlined social programmes and plans to reactivate the economy. "Turn him off" boomed a voice behind me, where a yuppie with a mobile phone and designer shirt demanded the sports channel.

There was a brief silence in the restaurant, then the chatter restarted.

Venezuela's class war is palpable on the city streets where unthinkable wealth cohabits with extreme poverty, with fortress walls and machine-guns separating the adversaries.

Mr Chavez, ironically, is not only the last hope for the poor, he is also the last hope for the oligarchy, the only politician who can hold back the floodgates of violent, spontaneous social unrest.

His "ridiculous" speeches buy time as army troops repair schools and roads, while corruption is rooted out in state institutions. No one wants to speculate on the future should his project fall apart.

On my way back from an interview on the outskirts of the city, a kind bus driver gave me a lift on his last run to the city centre. Once he had parked his bus for the night he would begin a seven-hour shift as a taxi driver. His infant daughter does not recognise him, his driving skills are diminished by overwork, he can barely make ends meet and yet he considers himself lucky.

The bus driver gave me a 20-minute political lecture, analysing Mr Chavez through the potholes in the road. "I know every inch of this road," he said, pointing out places where huge craters once tore strips off upholstery.

"Before Chavez, the potholes were there for months, now his people are out there all the time, a hole never lasts more than a day," he said, deeply impressed.

He wished only that Mr Chavez would take things a bit slower. "There's a lot of people out there who want vengeance," he said.

As I watched for the right street, he veered off his traditional route and took me to the door of my house. I stumbled off, grateful, half expecting film director Ken Loach to be waiting with a movie camera.