Couch Surfing
for the first time
in Caracas, Venezuela

(Editor's Note: Skip this paragraph if you don't care about tech talk) Some of my friends deride me for being into "services" that require me to give out my email address and sacrifice some of my privacy, ie myspace, flickr, del.icio.us, or suprglu. But I figure that any information I willingly put online is fine. As long as I know at the time of my action that whatever I'm doing will be available to others, I dive headlong into the datastreams. Besides, the benefits of online bookmarks, personal networking (friend of a friend) tools, and media sharing far outweigh what others may consider potential privacy liabilities. All my gmail spam comes from using it as the administrator contact for Drupal.

Non-tech post begins here) Though I've been on the road for four months, until the day before yesterday, I had never officially used couchsurfing to find a place to stay. The link on my blog came in handy in Cuernavaca when our new friend Uncle Pierre saw the link, liked the idea, and offered us his spare room. We ended up staying there for three weeks, sharing meals, sharing broadband net access, and enjoying one anothers company.

(For my stay in Caracas, I contacted all the people who had profiles before I left Panama City. There were about five in the whole city. Three replied. One had moved to Germany, the other was only there on weekends, and Juan Carlos (pictured) replied and said I could stay as long as I wanted.

Though his apartment is on the sprawling edge of the city in the district "Montalban 2," it has afforded me a different perspective on the city and Caracas culture. Montalban is where the more high market people live. They're anti-Chavez. There's Subway and Papa John's in the mini-mall that tries to pass for a public square. The streets are tree lined and the buildings are all seven stories or higher. It reminds me of the huge property development projects of Asia, but this predates them by ten or 15 years. It's not what I would call "comfortable" because it feels so artificial. But it's not uncomfortable either.

Last night when Juan Carlos came home at 11 pm because of a meeting and I didn't have a key, I stayed in the streets with his neighbors listening to a collection of 1970s American pop and drinking "Polar Light" beer. The Venezuelan people are friendly when you get to know them. Otherwise, they feel a bit standoffish.

So, my first impression of couchsurfing? Wow! What a fine tool! I think I'm going to try the service again during my unexpected, all expenses paid trip to San Diego next week. More on that later. Surf on!