Venezuela's Lust Hotels

Rachel Jones has a rosy view of Venezuela's "rent-'em-by-the-hour" hotels. She calls them 'Love Hotels.' I'll call them 'Lust Hotels.' This is my little story about one of them.

Back in 2006 I went off to Caracas. On a budget, I checked into a cheap-as-chips hotel downtown. A few days later, having been followed home a number of times and reminded of the less-than-safe situation in the city, I moved.

Opposition supporters march in Caracas. There's a sexy hotel to the right.

I had already scoped out one that looked safe and solid. It was in the mid-range part of the city, Sabana Grande. It was built with red bricks and didn't have many windows. It looked secure.

I went in to find the receptionist behind a solid-glass screen. I asked to check in. She looked a little perplexed from the start. I asked if I needed a reservation. She gave a wry smile and said no. I paid for the night and took the key.

My room wasn't far away, but when I got in I realised the error of my ways. There was no window. There was a mirror on the ceiling. The bed had a plastic sheet between the mattress and the top sheet. The TV, facing directly at the bed, beamed an array of hardcore pornography direct into the room. I knew this was not a place to visit on your own.

After one night on the crackly plastic sheets, I moved. But there was big demand for hotel rooms at the time, so I spent the rest of the time moving from hotel to hotel in the Sabana Grande area.

One evening I met up with the BBC's Man in Caracas. I had spoken to him on the phone and told him where I was staying. He said he would come with his driver and pick me up. I met him in the hotel reception. He then announced in an unusually deliberate fashion that we were ''going to go to the car now.'' This I had assumed.

He opened the front door of the hotel and ran to the car. I walked behind, bemused. He leaned out of the car and told me to hurry up. When I got in and closed the door, he exclaimed: ''Bloody hell! You chose an interesting place to stay!'' I declined to explain that this was one of the higher class hotels I had frequented.

All of this, as you might have guessed, illustrates that Caracas can be a violent place. In fact, it is so violent the newspapers have a separate section to report the daily blood letting. It's on the back page, where many other countries' newspapers put their sport.

Today, for example, tucked away at the bottom of the page is a story about two kids who burst into a 38-year-old army major's house, shot him dead and robbed him.

Back in 2006, I remember sitting in the reception of that same hotel, reading about a 'by-the-hour' hotel in the 'sucesos' section on the back page. The story was so brutal that it stayed with me.

It was the early hours of a Sunday morning. After a night of partying, couples were queueing at one of these hotels on the outskirts of town, waiting to rent a room where they could go crazy with one another.

But the hotel was full. And when one couple rented the last room, which the man behind them had wanted for himself and his lady friend, he shot them both dead. He then rented the room instead.

Caracas hotel rooms are cheap. Sometimes, it seems, life is too.