Day 1 - Monday
Arrive Caracas airport mid-afternoon after nine hour flight from Madrid.  Get free WSF bus to Caracas which takes 4 hours because of a landslide on the main road.  Go through poverty-stricken shanty towns perched on steep green hills.  Feel like a tourist. 

Dropped off at Plaza Venezuela where I ring a comrade and get various hotel numbers which I ring from a table on a street corner.  Eventually one hotel has a room and after some difficulty I get there.  It’s in a rundown downtown area.

Four more French comrades (from Perpignan) are sent my way. Will share with them.  Meanwhile go for dinner with Quebecois human rights lawyers who keep telling me I must lose the Castilian lisp. Hotel staff are very solicitous about our safety in this area. Jetlagged, I try to sleep. Volcanic snoring from comrades.

Day 2 - Tuesday
Walk with French comrades down the main Avenida Bolivar, which has been blocked off, towards the enormous Hilton complex (now part co-op, part Cuban-owned), the centre of the WSF. Stalls from government ministries line the route.

Arrive at assembly point for the march which opens the WSF. Thousands already here.
I hand out Fourth International leaflets in Spanish on Venezuela and 21st century socialism. As soon as they see the word ‘Socialismo’ people almost rip the leaflets out of my hands. I can hardly keep up. At one point all I can see is hands waiting to be filled with leaflets.

A student shows me round the Bolivarian University of Caracas, which has 3000 students and is situated in an old PDVSA (state oil company) building. Tuition is free.
March eventually moves off. As we walk along we give out more leaflets to Venezuelans lining the route who smile and say ‘welcome’ and ‘gracias’. A Peruvian comrade is puzzled as to why reformism dominates the European workers’ movement.

For a moment I am equally puzzled, then I slip into Trot mode. A marine biologist, a member of an indigenous people, the Wayu, explains to me the very different ways in which they are treated by the Venezuelan and Columbian governments.

Have changed to a single room and I try to get an early night but the noise of the street wakes me up at the crack of dawn.

Day 3 – Weds
First day of the WSF proper. We take 2 hours to queue to pay and register. Talk to two Catholic women inspired by liberation theology who came over from Franco’s Spain in the 1960s. They work in the barrios, fully support Chavez and talk of the successes of government programmes in tackling child malnutrition.

Less inspiringly, I talk to a comrade from the Partido Comunista do Brasil who thinks the Bolivians should wait for Brazil to become more economically powerful and not engage in ultra-left adventures like nationalising oil and gas.

Go to meeting chaired by Stuart Piper from Socialist Resistance, on workers’ self-management in Venezuelan factories and on participatory budgets in Brazil. The two experiences don’t really get compared in any detail. Too many speakers on the platform.
More details of the new left PT administration in Fortaleza are supplied by comrades over lunch. They turn out to be from the new party, P-SOL, but work closely with Luizianne Lins and the PT left.

Evening: Eventually manage to hook up with some British comrades from Hands Off Venezuela. Lose diary, which contains my WSF participant’s card, but Charley gives me another card which HOV have organised for me, so that’s all right. He shows me round the WSF campsite in Parque Carabobos.

It appears very relaxed, with stalls for cheap food and drink and it’s much nearer to the main activities than my hotel. Security is good at night. Lots of Venezuelans, including many from Caracas, have decided to camp here.

Day 4 - Thursday
After another semi-sleepless night at the hotel, go to meeting on the Peruvian Marxist Mariategui organised by some very serious young Peruvians. The meeting is conducted in incredibly rapid Spanish – I catch about thirty per cent. They seem very enthusiastic about Humala, the ‘Peruvian Chavez’ now emerging.

On the school wall where the meeting is held there is a brilliant satirical painting showing scenes from Venezuelan history. The last scene, of Caracas, is relatively featureless and empty, showing that the future still has to be built.

At the campsite, I talk to Katherin, a Venezuelan teacher of Spanish and English, and to Marcela who works on a government programme which helps people to re-train and to set up co-operatives and to a British comrade from the de Menezes Family campaign.

Day 5 – Friday
Traffic gets me up early again. Decide to move to campsite. Go to another meeting at the Hilton organised by and on the Latin American left which seems very worthy, but leave before the end to go on the march of the indigenous peoples.

When I reach the Plaza Venezuela people are gathered round the speakers with no police in sight (just who on earth thinks Britain is more democratic than Venezuela?). There is, however, a huge Kit-Kat sign to remind us that Venezuela is still a capitalist country.

Then go to a meeting organized by Greg Wilpert, the founder of www.venezuelanalysis.com. on post-capitalist alternatives. When we emerge from the metro we could be in a European or North American city. Clean streets, shiny big commercial buildings, policemen directing traffic. This was the base for the opposition during the 2002 coup and during the referendum campaign. Feel out of place in my WSF T-shirt.

The university is appropriately plush and the discussion is conducted in English between North Americans and Brits, as far as I can tell. I could be at an academic seminar at home. But interesting points are raised about the problems of developing revolutionary consciousness and democracy.

Brilliant evening of Latin American music and dance in a venue nearby. Very political and inspiring. I am beginning to understand the way in which African, indigenous and Spanish influences intermingle in the music. Great feeling of unity, of a continent stirring once again.

Back at the tents, young Chavistas talk, laugh and play music into the small hours. Meanwhile it rains heavily and the floor of my tent becomes a puddle. I achieve a certain level of resignation and even a couple of hours’ sleep. The noise starts again at 7.30am.

Day 6 – Saturday
Bleary and blurry. Take cold shower behind a plastic sheet in the rain. It’s not that bad! Steam rises from somewhere and I discover it’s me. Really hard to talk Spanish this morning. Miss important meeting with Venezuelan leftists because of losing my diary. Make the best of it by using the time to begin writing this.

Run into a mother and daughter from England at a kiosk. Mother was born here, supports the opposition and articulately explains why. Make some points back without getting too defensive.

Afternoon. Marijuana March – a contradiction in terms. We march out of the camp a few yards and then have a big party. There is ska, hip hop and salsa on two stages and people surge into the main road, disgruntling further Caracas’s car drivers.

Day 7 – Sunday
Wake up at 7.23am, seven minutes before the alarm is due to go off. Shower, pack up tent and say goodbye, Try catch a free WSF bus to the airport.

Traipse around for some time, following misleading but well-meant directions. Eventually end up at a fare-paying bus stop under a bridge.

Take a last look at Caracas and the hills and shanty towns on the way to the airport.
Talk to two women from the Galician nationalist left in the check-out queue.
They are working with the Venezuelan government to give some of the poor from the barrios a new start as small farmers.

I say that I feel ready to go back home and start building solidarity. They comment that I seem very ‘animado’. I am.

*Andrew Kennedy is a supporter of Socialist Resistance in Britain and teaches at the School of African and Oriental Studies, London.