Tourists generally don't go to Venezuela because the country is extremely unsafe. The capital, Caracas, is ranked as the second city with the highest murder rate in the world [1]. There is an extremely low regard for life - petty criminals will kill you for your phone.

However, we do have some of the most unreal places on the planet! [2]

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/12/violent-crime-m...

[2] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4ghbtqN0bRY/TyV8kLJVivI/AAAAAAAABX...

You're half right: "tourists" are the one of the solutions, but you can't easily turn Bitcoin into food.

There's a booming trade in the port cities. Sailors bring dollars, which they trade for sex. That turns prostitutes into currency traders. Bloomberg had a story about this earlier this year.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-09/venezuela-prostitut...

Yeah, this. I would much preferred to have taken in bitcoin.

Either you use the ATM and everything is 3x as expensive as it should be or you carry around a minimum of $1000 on your person in one of the most violent countries in the world.

$300 of my USD stash got stolen by the Venezuelan army guard while strip searching me on the border with Colombia.