Hi,
We did Venezuela last feb, my biggest tip... Take US dollars in with you, the official exchange rate was around 2 Bolivar to the USD (ATM withdrawals, credit card or hotel exchanges), but if you change it in the street (ask other tourists, or you'll no doubt be approached in the street) the excange rate was anywhere from 4-6 depending on how good your spanish was.
We booked flights from Caracas to Porlamar at the check in desk when we arrived, we acutally paid some dude that approaced us about 30USD(probably too much, but we were hungover, don't speak spanish, and airport staff didnt speak english), he carried our bags all the way to the domestic terminal and arranged the flights for us at the desk, can't remember how much the flights were, but they were reasonable by aussie standards, including the hit for excess/oversize baggage which wasn't a prob on QF or AA. There were 2 airlines Aerospital and Conviasa I think that operated to Porlamar on Margarita. Have a look at www.amadeus.net and that'll give you all the options. Our little mate even excanged some of our USD at a car rental place to get us started... think it was about 3:1 there.
Taxi from Porlamar airport to El Yaque was as advertised in Lonely Planet, just got dropped near all the hotels and organised accom(it's a small town prob 1km end to end), it was holiday time for the locals so all the cheaper accom was taken, we stayed at El Yaque Paradise which was at the nicer end of whats avail and think that was about 40USD a 100ish bolivar per nite per person. This hotel also sells tickets for the boat to Coche.
El Yaque is where the nitelife is, and heaps of bars for food etc along the beach, food was ok, fish, chicken, rice, pizza but nothing flash... cheap tho. There's a kite school at the end of the beach, but I thought kiting El Yaque sucked, really gusty, crowded and choppy water.
Coche was awesome, there's a kite school there www.cochekitesport.com the guy that runs it is good value, and a cool place to hang out(cold beer). The wind blows off shore at the main beach so the water is like glass. They have a party every week or so... but that is the ONLY nitelife on coche. You can't get money on coche so take it with you(same goes for chicks), there's a couple of ATM's but they work 1 attempt out of 50. We stayed a few nites at Coche Paradise, around 50 bucks a nite all inclusive, it was ok, but we ended up moving to Posada Oasis up the road, rooms were similar quality, and paid 7 bucks a day incl breakfast and transfers 5km to kitebeach...(lonely planet phrase section came in handy here cause they only speak spanish and understood a bit of my very bad high school italian) you can do a downwinder from there to kitebeach and they'll pick u up at whatever time you arrange, some days we did 3 or 4 downwinders. At nite we ate at the posada or got a group together and got a cab into town(5-10bucks) where there are 3 places to eat, Pizza shop, Chicken shop, and the Seafood shop which was a winner.
Lots of ppl that were there for months at a time stayed at the posada, and went to El Yaque or Porlamar for a day or 2 to shop or party, quite a few stayed at El Yaque and commuted across each day to kite... first boat gets there about 10, last boat leaves around 6ish... its free if you stay at the paradise hotels, and about 10US otherwise i think.
We didn't get crook guts, but quite a few did, prob best to take some medication just in case...the local doctor handed out some kind of pills but who knows what they were, ppl were out of action for bout 3 days.
Have fun!
