Prado beachfront cottage

Prado sits at the southern end of Bahia, where the Discovery Coast runs for eighty kilometres of coconut palms, river mouths and cliffs the colour of brick dust. Between Prado, Cumuruxatiba and Corumbau there are beaches you can walk for an hour without meeting anybody, protected by the Descobrimento national park behind and the Abrolhos marine park offshore, where humpback whales calve between July and November.

The cottage is exactly what a Bahian beach house should be: a hundred and twenty square metres, single storey, whitewashed with blue shutters, a tiled verandah across the front, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a big kitchen-dining room and a plot of eight hundred square metres planted with coconut, mango and cashew. Ceiling fans, screens, an outdoor shower for sandy feet, a rainwater tank and a covered churrasqueira. A hundred and fifty metres of sandy track leads to the beach.

Prado town itself has about thirty thousand people, a historic upper town with a seventeenth-century church, a fishing harbour, a market, supermarkets, banks, pharmacies and a hospital, so daily life is easy and cheap. Restaurants do moqueca capixaba-style, fried fish with pirao, acaraje and cold beer for prices that seem historic if you have come from the southeast.

The area is genuinely quiet. There is no airport in Prado; Teixeira de Freitas is ninety minutes inland for regional flights, Porto Seguro is two and a half hours north with direct flights from Sao Paulo, Rio and Belo Horizonte. That distance is why the prices are what they are, and also why the beaches are empty in January.

Buying is standard: CPF, lawyer, matricula, ITBI and registration. On this coast, pay attention to the terreno de marinha rules that apply within thirty-three metres of the high-water line — many beach plots are held with an occupancy right and an annual federal fee rather than pure freehold, which is normal and manageable but must be documented. Then it is coconut water, whale season, and a beach that belongs to you and about four other families.