With a crown on his head, Marcio Matolias carefully retouches his sandcastle, sculpting and smoothing it with a shovel as bathers cool off nearby in the suffocating January heat.
They say a man's home is his castle, and Matolias has lived in his — albeit made of sand — on a beach in Rio de Janeiro for the last 22 years. In Barra da Tijuca, a wealthy beachside neighborhood west of Rio, neighbors and friends call him "the king."
He gladly assumes the role and poses willingly for passersby, scepter in hand, on his throne outside his meticulously sculpted home. It seems a precarious existence, but Matolias, 44, can never see himself living any other way.
"People pay exorbitant rent to live in front of the sea. I don't have any bills, and I live very well here," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP), waving a hand at the white sand and the islands sparkling on the horizon.
It requires constant upkeep. He retouches a turret here, adjusts a majestic gate there. He sprinkles water on the walls to keep them firm in the baking heat, which on a recent afternoon reached 40 degrees Celsius.
Despite the idyllic setting, inside space is tight — about 3 square meters. Matolias, single with no children, lives with a pile of books and some golf clubs, his passions after fishing. His bed? A sleeping bag on the ground. His bathroom? The firemen's station about 30 meters away where he can use the bathroom and shower for less than a dollar.
Matolias believes he has everything he needs. The only problem is the unbearable summer heat. "The sand retains the heat, so sometimes I can't sleep here, and I go to sleep at a friend's house. But the truth is I prefer to stay here, even if I have to sleep outside by the sea."
Tourist attraction
Matolias came south to Rio from his humble hometown of Duque de Caxias to seek his fortune but could only afford to live on the street. All that changed when one day a friend taught him how to build a sandcastle.
"I learned a lot from reading, and I think my castle is a mixture of styles between Niemeyer and Gaudi," he said of his royal palace, buttressed with sandbags and logs.
The mayor's office never gave him a problem, he said. "I became a tourist attraction in a way and also a social service," he added, gesturing to his book stand on the nearby promenade.
He does not ask for money, only that people exchange what they take. To make a living, Matolias put a box for donations at the entrance of his sandcastle. However, throughout the afternoon, the score of people who stopped to take pictures donated nothing. Matolias does not appear to care.
"They often steal from the box. I used to get angry. I wanted to sleep with a stone in my hand to stop it, but that paranoia started taking over my life. I don't want that. I do this for pleasure," he said.
Work in progress
From time to time, a shopping center pays him to make one of his magnificent sand sculptures for special events.
Matolias would like his work to not be so ephemeral. In just a few minutes, rain can destroy the 10 or 20 hours' work it takes to carefully complete one fairy-tale castle.
An optimist by nature, Matolias hopes to realize his biggest dream of eventually making sculptures using other materials at a friend's place next year. Meanwhile, he does not seem to tire of endlessly shaping his fragile palace with a knife or shovel.
Like his favorite masterpiece, Gaudi's Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, the largest unfinished basilica in the world, Marcio's creation is a perpetual work in progress.