Caracas:
Hundreds of red-clad Hugo Chavez supporters paid tribute to the late Venezuelan leader outside his Caracas military hospital on Wednesday, weeping as they bade farewell to their hero.
They were there to see off a four-horse hearse taking the socialist leader's body through the capital to lie in state at a military academy that the former paratrooper colonel once dubbed "the house of blue dreams."
"I'm here to say my final goodbye to my president. There will never be another Chavez. He is the greatest man that this fatherland gave us," said Jose Gregorio Conde, 34, an education worker.
"I couldn't sleep all night thinking about what happened," he said.
National guard troops in green fatigues guarded the hospital as the procession began, one day after Chavez, 58, lost his almost two-year battle with cancer.
"What can I sat, I am very sad," said Isabel Febres, who cried as she stared at a photo of Chavez with his presidential sash.
Many had spent the night there while others arrived early under the Caribbean sun. Some read the official daily Ciudad Caracas, whose headline read "Onward to victory, always, Comandante Chavez!"
"I love him," said Iris Dicuro, 62, who came from the northeastern city of Puerto La Cruz and wore a shirt with the words "Forward Comandante." "I want to bid farewell because he was a good man who gave everything to the poor."
"He did well for me. I am healthy thanks to him, for the Cuban doctors that he brought here," she said, referring to one of the many oil-funded social programs he brought to impoverished neighborhoods.
Amid the grief, many were sure that Chavez's 14-year legacy would continue and that they would vote for his chosen successor, Vice President Nicolas Maduro, in elections expected to take place within 30 days.
"God willing, we will continue the last wishes of my president and we will vote for Maduro. We can't allow everything to be lost. What he did, giving us education, new homes, food, he did so much," said Mairis
Briceno, 21, wearing a red shirt with an image of Chavez hugging and elderly woman and the words "love with love pays off."
Aldemar Castro, a 29-year-old bricklayer, said that if Chavez hand-picked Maduro, "it is because he knows that he can do something good for Venezuela."