Beach House for Sale in Manguinhos, Búzios, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

The Enseada do Gancho (or, in English, Hook Cove) has been called Búzios's "corral dos milionários." In English, call it Millionaires' Row. Neighbors to the house we are privileged to offer for sale are Brazilian mini- and maxi-moguls and Brazilian celebrities as well as a grabbag of North Americans and Europeans, some of them speculators and investors, some of them year-round residents. The property immediately adjacent is the boutique hotel Martin Pescador. (See the pousada's Web site for another set of photos of our magical seascape.) Immediately beyond MP: the sprawling vacation palace of one of Forbes Magazine's plus-or-minus-1000 world billionaires.

Our house was built for a Rio industrialist in 1989-90. The architect was Paulo Guilherme Costa Teixeira, and the house adheres to the Búzios ordinance that requires that second-floor construction be restricted to not more than 50 percent of ground-floor construction. The house is in the semi-rustic, metastasized fisherman's cottage style that is, in the Brazilian usage, Búzios's "picture postcard." Details range from clay roofing tiles to expanses of noble woods that can no longer be forested legally and brick floors in a herringbone pattern with hardwood trim.

Enter via a little-trafficked street, all but private, high above the beach. A generous circulating area leads to a deck-sitting space with an expansive view across Manguinhos Bay to the distant towns of Barra de São João and Rio das Ostras and the 806-meter-high (2,644') São João Mountain and other elevations of the coastal mountain range. Follow the steep slope of our beachfront hillside downstairs to the principal living spaces, which fall within a rectangle 8.9 meters (29.2') deep and with lengths of 11.5 meters (37.8') to 14.3 meters (47').

One component of this rectangle, something short of a quarter of the whole, is a roofed veranda—a dining and lounging domain—three of whose sides are closed and one of whose sides is open to the gentle elements. The indoor three quarters of the rectangle are composed of two sitting areas and a dining area, which also features a breakfast and/or service bar.

The house proper contains five bedrooms and three and a half baths as well as a library (3.2m x 3m/10.6' x 9.7') with shelving for about 1,000 books and a wet sauna and accessory shower room. The master bedroom suite and two other bedrooms are on the upstairs entrance level. The two final bedrooms and the library are downstairs.

There is a small lawn above the beachfront. Reach it via a long stone stairway that runs down along one side of the house from a garden immediately behind the principal living space.

The swimming pool (5.2m x 3m/17.1' x 10.1') and a spacious gazebo are set in a terrace which is a flight of steps down from the veranda yet still high above the just mentioned beachfront lawn. The above-ground basement below the terrace, more than 5-meters (over 16.6') at its maximum height, is large enough to be developed into two extremely generous suites with still more gorgeous ocean views.

Closet and other storage space throughout the house is extravagant.

Búzios is an internationally-celebrated resort town on a peninsula at a driving distance of about two hours over excellent highways from Rio and Rio International Airport. The total beach count in Búzios is around 26 and, because of the rugged local topography, many of the beaches are small and intimate. Downtown Búzios, a short drive from the house, is home to an impressive array of restaurants, bars, discothèques, and shops (especially bikini shops). The heart of downtown Búzios is the pedestrians- only Rua das Pedras, or Stones Street, where, during the South American high season, Royal Caribbean, Oceania, MSC Italian and other cruise lines discharge their passengers. A satellite center, with another half dozen chic but casual restaurants, has recently been developed at the edge of a traditional fishermen's market at a walk along the beach of about ten minutes from the house (where the pier is in our photos). The 18-hole Búzios Golf Club is considered to be one of the best in the country. Locate us on Google Earth at 22º45'58"S x 41º54'31"W.