If you’ve ever yearned to follow in the footsteps of Sir David Attenborough, here’s your chance. For the price of a semi in Bognor, you could buy the ranch house in the Brazilian jungle where the wildlife conservationist, documentary-maker and all-round BBC behemoth stayed to film hummingbirds. Set in 120 hectares, it’s teeming with exotic birds and luxuriant plant life.
After his time at Sitio Bacchus, 60 miles northeast of Rio, for the Life of Birds series in 1998, Attenborough wrote a thank-you letter to the owners, David and Izabel Miller. “It was one of the high spots of my last three bird-filled years,” he said. “And not the least reason was the warmth of your hospitality, and the splendour and fascination of your home.”
Sir David, who celebrated his 90th birthday in May, filmed the brightly coloured hummingbirds that gather around the house in swarms of 10-20, particularly in the mornings and evenings. Bottles of sugary water hung outside attract a feeding frenzy at dusk, before the birds go into a state of torpor overnight.
The timber-framed main home and additional bunk house, which sleeps eight, were built by the late David Miller, a British accountant. Now his Portuguese widow, Izabel, is selling up with the help of Miller’s lifelong friend, the orchid expert Dr Richard Warren. Together, the pair created a conservation project that attracted hundreds of orchid lovers and eco-tourists every year. And this “precious corner of incomparable mountain cloud forest in the Serra do Mar” can be yours for £380,000.
“David and I grew up together in Sussex, and we always shared a love of wildlife, but while I studied botany, he became an accountant for a firm in Canada, which then shipped him down to Brazil,” says Warren, who lives in North Yorkshire with his partner, the novelist and former children’s laureate Anne Fine. “In the mid-1970s, he was sitting in a bar when he heard of a piece of land for sale, with no title, for just $20,000. Being a naturalist at heart, he leapt at the chance.”
Advertisement
At the time, the site, which is a 2½-hour drive from Rio, could only be reached using hunters’ tracks, so Miller set about the lengthy task of constructing a house in hardwood timber from trees that had fallen 50-100 years before, but were still intact. “I remember he had to use a saw-pit to saw them up — quite extraordinary,” Warren says.
What is now on offer is an attractive house with timbered ceilings, large open-plan living and dining areas with open fires, a kitchen with a woodburning stove and a gas cooker with a hob, all looking out over spectacular views. The outdoor pool is now in need of some TLC.
Soon after Miller’s purchase, Warren — by then a young government botanist specialising in fungi and moulds on potatoes — was invited to Sitio Bacchus for the first time. “I fell in love with the place, with the climate, which is a benign 14 degrees for much of the year, and with the terrain, but most of all with the orchids,” he recalls. “They were everywhere — hanging above my head, nestling in rocky crevices and leaping out at me on all the forest paths.
“That’s when I decided to throw away my last mouldy research potato, without any regret, and concentrate on orchids.”
The estate is designated “a private reserve of the natural patrimony”, ensuring protection against development. Miller and Warren started a business specialising in growing orchids from seed: the plants need a fungus to germinate, and Warren grew the seeds of less familiar varieties in bottles in a lab back home, to satisfy the curiosity of passionate orchid-growers. The project was a success, and more so when they expanded into the holiday business.
Advertisement
“In the early days, there was only gas lighting, which was very restful, so when electricity came, it was a bit of a disappointment,” Warren says. The only tweeting was from the birds, although telephone and web access arrived 10 years ago. Today, the birds — and the orchids — are still the main event.
For more details of Sitio Bacchus, email david.izabel@gmail.com