Georgetown seawall cottage

Georgetown is the only capital on the South American mainland where the sea is held back by a Dutch-built seawall and the streets are lined with white timber colonial houses on stilts. The Atlantic here is brown with Amazon and Essequibo silt rather than turquoise, and the beach is a wide tidal flat, but the seawall promenade is where the whole city goes in the evening — kite flyers, food carts, cricket, families and sound systems from Kitty right along to Camp Road.

The house is a classic Georgetown build: two storeys of greenheart and pine on brick columns, with a shaded ground-level space beneath, Demerara shutters angled to let breeze in and rain out, and a verandah across the front. Inside, a hundred and forty square metres of polished wooden floors, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living-dining room and a kitchen at the rear, with a fenced garden of mango and coconut. It has been rewired and replumbed, has a water tank and pump, air conditioning in the bedrooms, and off-street parking. Two hundred and fifty metres to the seawall.

Guyana is English-speaking, which makes it the easiest country on this stretch of coast for a foreign buyer: the legal system is common law, conveyancing is done through the Deeds Registry with a local attorney, and non-nationals can own freehold. The economy is also the fastest growing in the world thanks to offshore oil, which means Georgetown property is one of the few markets in this catalogue where you should expect prices to rise rather than drift.

Practical life is comfortable and cheap. Bourda and Stabroek markets sell everything grown between here and the interior; there are supermarkets, private hospitals, international schools, banks and a growing restaurant scene that runs from Guyanese pepperpot and cook-up rice to Indian, Chinese and Brazilian food. Cheddi Jagan international airport is about forty-five minutes south, with flights to New York, Miami, Toronto, Panama, Barbados and Trinidad.

This is a coast for character rather than swimming. For sand you drive an hour to the Essequibo coast or take a boat to the sandbanks and river beaches at Bartica, Saxacalli or Shell Beach, where four species of sea turtle nest between March and August. Behind the city, the interior is one of the last great wildernesses — Kaieteur Falls, the Rupununi savannah, giant otters and jaguars — all reachable on a domestic flight. Buy here for a rare, handsome timber house in a boom-time capital, with the wild Guianas at the end of the road.