The first step towards keeping The Black Dog at bay was to play a little game. I’d blindly stab a finger at my beautiful wall map and wherever it had landed, I’d Google the place. This particular day I was swaying left (my crumbling right hip was giving me gip so I was trying to avoid putting all of my hefty weight on it) and found myself eye to eye with Brazil.

I had a lovely morning perusing the pictures of the Amazon Rainforest, the rainbow hues of Brazilian people, from ivory through to Blue-Black, with every colour in between, and the opulent festival that is Rio Carnival. It looked like the sort of place I’d thrive in – what with all of that Samba music to wiggle to - so did a search of volunteering programmes. I ended up handing a huge stack of money over to a company called ´Geovisions’, in exchange for them finding a host family for me to use my ever expanding vocabulary and spend my allocated month teaching them conversational English.

I was especially keen to be introduced to the gastronomic wonders of Espírito Santo, making it very clear that I don’t agree with making dietary sacrifices just to conform to the narrow media ideal of beauty. The state being very rich in sea life, the next obvious step is to develop a delicious typical cuisine based on seafood. Salt cod, crab, mussels, shrimp, dogfish, oysters are all part of the staple diet and are often made into battered snacks, which are often sold for small change by hawkers on the beach. There are also plenty of ice-cream sellers that peddle exotic sorbets; my first one was pumpkin and coconut. It seems that Brazilians have a sweet tooth, what with their sugar bread, sugary coffee and freshly squeezed fruit juices sweetened with tablespoon upon tablespoon of castor sugar. All of this means that teeth are very probably riddled with cavities, and waistlines expand at a stretch-mark inducing pace.

The city of Vitória is an interesting one. After being assured that there were no maps to be had and being advised to simply use my navigational instinct, I spent a tentative few days wandering about the city in strict parallel lines. I discovered a canal, many boutiques, restaurants, salons and phone shops, all on the same expansive avenue office. Taking a risky, right, then right, bearing left for a good fifteen minutes, I stumbled across a beach with a Tourist Information kiosk, manned by a guy with good English. He loaded me with maps and information about the city.

I saw that aside from the northern part of the city that I’d been tramping, there is an Old Town district round the hump of the bay. My mission was to get myself there using the extensive bus network. This was by no means easy without the necessary level of communication needed to get from A to B without mishap. Subsequently, I went round and round in circles, missed connections at terminals, got stranded in thunder storms and generally behaved in a shambolic manner - but it was all extremely good fun. Each large bus has a driver and conductor, like in the good old days, but instead of them ambling up and down to collect fares, they sit controlling a turnstile. Attempting to barge your way through the creaky barrier while the driver throws caution to the wind and careers around corners is a sure way to get yourself injured, and belongings to go flying in every direction. This danger is multiplied ten-fold when on small buses. The driver takes on both roles, and rummages around in his pockets for change, only one hand on the wheel and no eyes on the road.

In the Old Town, there are many places of interest including parks, nature reserves and of course churches and museums. Igreja De São Gonçalo (Saint Gonçalo Church) was particularly interesting. Inaugurated on 2nd November 1766 it was built by the members of ‘The Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Good Death and Assumption’, which was initially made up of slaves and their mixed race descendents. This church - built by the blacks, for the blacks - faces the ocean, towards the Motherland, Africa. The white slave owners used the other churches located in the original core of the village, which all faced each other. The Museu de Arte has a collection by Andy Warhol until June. Always keen as quince to see great art, I spent hours in there watching his controversial film Kiss - 54 minutes of extreme close-ups of couples in the passionate throes of lengthy smooches – and screen tests of the now famous actors and actresses (like Brigid Berlin, Eric Emerson and of course Edie Sedgwick) that he used in his work. The curators had also set up their own film equipments, so I sat for my very own screen test. Four minutes is actually an extremely long time when you’re supposed to be sitting still, attempting to look like the most attractive and talented being in the world. ‘Introducing Almaz Ohene, coming soon to a screen near you!’