CARACAS (MarketWatch) -- Kraft mayonnaise, Peter Pan peanut butter, European cheeses and Johnny Walker whiskey are plentiful here. But pity the poor housewife who's been sent out to find a carton of eggs.

As the wife of a recently expatriated oilman, I can count on "the company" to provide my family with a luxury apartment far beyond our regular means, a car with a driver and a 24-hour emergency hotline, but eggs? Not even the might of Big Oil can get me a dozen eggs.

It's a weird state of affairs in oil- and cash-rich Venezuela. Supported by this decade's unprecedented rise in oil prices and the populist government's largesse, Venezuelans have gone on a spending spree, taxing this cosmopolitan city's limited infrastructure with their consumption.

City streets and highways are at a permanent standstill, not large enough to accommodate the multitude of shiny new SUVs, sensible sedans and jalopies fighting for the right of way. The shopping malls are always uncomfortably packed. And construction cranes are popping up all over town, flanked by giant billboards promising yet more malls.

Direct TV satellites jut out from both expensive high-rise balconies and the rooftops of cinder-block homes that cling to the tropical hills surrounding this city in a valley. And an abundance of pirated DVDs, Xbox games and prepaid phone cards ensure that not just the moneyed set enjoy the latest in electronics.

But eggs -- neither I nor anyone else can find eggs. At least not on the first try, and very typically not on the second or third try, either.

Keeping a household stocked with basic food items has become the latest competitive sport where the rules are these: Keep your eyes and ears open for new shipments, think strategically, and stock up whenever you can.

Hugo's revolution hits a snag

Tapping into his oil windfall, President Hugo Chavez has in many ways lived up to his promise of distributing the nation's wealth back to its citizens, improving the lives of many through handouts, subsidies and social programs. Symbols of new wealth are everywhere, and, while the city's edges are frayed, the grinding poverty so apparent in many Central American and Andean nations' capitals is not immediately visible here.

Not surprisingly, with so much money floating around the country, demand for just about everything has surged, leading to the highest rate of inflation in Latin America.

But rather than put the brakes on an overheating economy, Chavez has instead chosen to fight inflation, which is expected to rise to 20% this year from 17% in 2006, by slapping price controls on over 400 food items. Producers, meanwhile, have said they can't bring goods to market at the government-mandated prices, leading to shortages and yet again skewing the market against those who can least afford it.

"Demand is higher than supply," said Juan Pablo Fuentes, an economist with Moody's Economy.com. "The market's way to operate is for prices to go up to bring equilibrium to the market, but with price controls the market doesn't work this way, and the producers don't want to sell below cost. It's supply and demand."

In a healthy economy, higher demand would temporarily raise prices but would also spur production, bringing the market back into synch. But price controls and the added complication of potential expropriation by the state have caused disarray in the supply chain.

"Producers don't want to invest," said Fuentes in a telephone interview. "They don't want to double output if the government might come and take their assets."

As a result, eggs, beef, milk, corn oil, black beans -- in short, the basic building blocks of the local diet -- are the new luxury items, most easily gotten by those who can afford to pay prices that are often three times higher than what the government has mandated. But Smucker's jam, not considered a crucial food item and therefore free of price controls, abounds at about $8 a jar.

Where's the beef?

I strutted confidently into the plus-sized supermarket located near our apartment shortly after my family relocated to Caracas in early April.

Fluent in Spanish and having lived in South America before, I was extremely annoyed that the company-assigned driver insisted on coming along with me, chafing at the suggestion that I needed any sort of assistance.

The store was nearly identical to the flagship Kroger where I shopped near my home in Houston, in both size and layout, and at first glance seemed just as well-stocked. The store greeted its customers with the same too-bright fluorescent lights. Display tables at the head of each spacious row were stacked with bags of chips and the latest designer energy drink.

Already feeling patronized by my unwanted chaperone, I was downright angry when upon entering he instructed: "First, we're going for meat."

Within minutes, however, we were nearly separated as I got tangled among dozens of people and shopping carts parked in front of the meat counter. I clearly had no idea what was going on.

By the end of the shopping trip, I would be reduced to exploiting a tenuous personal connection and bribing my way to beef.

I took a number at the ticket counter, drawing something in the 250s -- I was behind about 60 or 70 people. So, Lesson No. 1: Always check first to see if there's beef or poultry, and, if there is, get a number before continuing along the rest of the hunt.

With a number in my pocket and assured that it wouldn't be called for at least another hour, I set out for the rest of the store. Just as in the States, I had to squint in the canned-goods aisle to pick out the cheapest, generic brands of tomato sauce from among hundreds of Del Monte and Hunt cans. Pasta, ditto. Pancake mix, check. Peanut butter, jam, syrup, wheat bread, Kraft singles, check. All imported, all familiar names.

And then I hit another unexpected roadblock, this time in the coffee, tea and sweeteners aisle. The shelves were stacked -- no visible gaps anywhere -- but I couldn't find any sugar. Real sugar, that is. There were all kinds of artificial sweeteners, and there were plenty of bags of coarse brown sugar, but no plain sugar.

I only found the white stuff because a stranger came over and leaned in to whisper -- yes, she really did whisper -- "The sugar is over there," pointing to a dark corner stacked with broken-up cardboard boxes. She must have taken pity on me, an obvious foreigner unhappily scanning the shelves asking anyone within earshot, "Isn't there real sugar?"

I hurried over and elbowed my way through a huddle of people crowded around a single shopping cart that had been haphazardly piled with bags of sugar. I grabbed two, just in case.

After 45 minutes of shopping, we returned to the meat counter and found I was still behind 30 people who all looked like they were gearing up to buy three months' worth of meat.

Just as I was about to call it quits, the driver dropped the name of someone he knew in the meat department to a nearby butcher and told me that I could jump the line as long as my order wasn't too large. With that, and a surreptitious tip of about $3, I was discreetly handed 2 kilograms of ground beef and 1 kilogram of beef chunks for stew.

It's only gotten slightly easier to buy beef since that first, chaotic encounter with the meat line, but mostly because I've become savvier about finding it and am able to pay prices that have almost doubled over the past year.

After cooking through my first batch of meat, I learned to ask when beef would arrive each time I made a quick run to the store and buy much more expensive and less fresh items such as pork instead. Many times the answer to my queries is a weary shrug; no one knows when the missing goods will arrive. The truck comes when it comes.

It's the same for eggs, the same for sugar, and the same for milk. Sometimes the shelves are lined with hundreds of long-life milk and powdered-milk cartons, and sometimes they're completely empty.

The last time I successfully bought beef at my regular grocery store, I happened to ask in the morning whether meat would be arriving, and they actually said, "Yes, today at 3 p.m." I was there promptly at the given time and drew a number about 20 slots behind what was currently being served. I finally got my beef two hours later.

As for eggs, I eventually found out through sheer happenstance that I'm lucky enough to live at a building where every Wednesday a man delivers fresh poultry and eggs, as long as you call in your order in advance and reserve a carton. He sells a carton of 30 eggs for twice the price mandated on the government's Official Gazette.

And sugar? From now on, family and friends visiting from the States won't be able to step off the tarmac without two bags of sugar.