The Ultramarathoner of Madeira, Portugal Wants to Take You Wild Swimming
Mayra Santos is a quirky, charming world record holder who offers lessons on the small island she calls home.
On a 55-degree day in December of last year, 310 miles off the Western Sahara coast, Mayra Santos took her final strokes toward history. The endurance athlete slid into the sea's warm embrace at dawn. And 11 hours later, her circumnavigation of Porto Santo, a tiny volcanic island belonging to Portugal, was almost complete.
Hundreds of spectators cheered from shore as her yellow swim cap bobbed into view. They knew Santos would soon realize her goal of becoming the first person to swim almost 20 continuous miles around the island. But they didn't know the trials of the final mile.
Rollicking whitecaps splashed salt water into the Brazilian’s mouth, and her infected eye, damaged during the single-digit miles, became more unbearable by the second. But Santos simply did what every successful ultramarathoner must do: suspend reality. She began to visualize the joy of completion, to picture her smiling fans waiting on the beach, to imagine how it would feel to have another superlative to list in her open water accomplishments.
Her method worked.
As she stumbled from the shallow water onto sun-warmed sand, Santos was as striking as the island she calls home. Although infected goggle marks underscored her big, brown eyes, she quickly forgot she was in pain. Instead, she opened her arms to embrace João Duarte, her husband and coach—she calls him “treinamor.”
Then, as the crowd looked on, she demanded: "What's next?"
Ten days before orbiting Porto Santo, Santos handed me a dirndl-patterned swimsuit and asked me to pose for a selfie. “The sea is not behaving,” she chirped before snapping the first of 150 photos she would take of us during our mini-training session. “But we can still have fun.”
From the safety of a concrete swim platform, we stared 10 feet down at the dark gray Atlantic. A twine-wrapped ladder slick with algae—our only way to enter–was only visible in short spurts between cresting waves. “This is going to be great,” she said with the relaxed tone of someone about to enjoy a margarita while floating down a lazy river.
For a mortal like me, this was not the ideal day for a swim. But for Santos, who seeks out stormy seas with the same enthusiasm others chase sunshine and clear skies, these were optimal conditions. “I have to train in adverse conditions to make sure I’m prepared to overcome any scenario I may encounter,” she said.
While productive for her personal training, the afternoon was not fortuitous for her adventure swimming tour company, Swim Madeira, which helps fund her record-breaking attempts. A week of whitecaps and rain meant our all-day escapade around Garajau Partial Nature Reserve never came to fruition.
When the weather is better—which is often the case in Madeira’s moderate subtropical climate—Santos leads novice and competitive wild swimmers on low-stakes adventures and more serious training camps. Duarte follows in a kayak to cheer everyone on.
Swim Madeira’s half-day sessions, which include boat transfers to quiet corners of the island, lunch, sightseeing, and lots of candid footage from Santos’ underwater camera, start at 90 Euros. The total swimming duration averages about an hour and 45 minutes, split into two sessions.
Her popular seven-day swim camps parade adventure travelers all over Madeira’s eye-poppingly blue waters, clocking a little over two nautical miles. “Once I surprised a client who is a regular and adventurous swimmer by leading her to a cave where baby sharks congregate at certain times of the year,” said Santos.
A venerable jokester, she paused for the kicker: “I thought she would be thrilled, but when we came face to face with the peaceful baby sharks she screamed shark, shark!”
Santos also takes other ultramarathon swimmers under her wing. Last month, she organized the logistics and training plan that allowed 63-year-old American swimmer, Robin Rose, to complete an 18.5 mile swim from Madeira to Desertas Islands in nine hours and one minute. Meanwhile, our training session was about 18.3 miles short of that.
To me, a half-hour romp through rough water felt like enough exercise for the year and lent credence to my theory that Santos was, indeed, superhuman. As I choked on my saltwater spit, she sang Stevie Wonder and effortlessly vogued five feet below the surface of the water.
Back above ground in the kiddie pool at the Sentido Galomar Resort, she told me about her world record for longest continuous counter current swim—31 hours, 7 minutes—her childhood, and her circuitous, surprising path to becoming a competitive swimmer at age 37.
Santos hails from Juiz de Fora, a traditional city in the state of Minas Gerais often referred to by the initials "JF." Her draw to water was automatic and intensified by growing up near an Olympic-sized pool at a neighboring school.
"That was my refuge," she said. “I would go with my sister, and my mother would plead with her not to let me go in the deep end of the pool." But the urge was irresistible; Santos manufactured any excuse to go in, throwing her belongings into the depths and insisting she had to go retrieve them.
Santos joined the swimming school when she was nine and credits her teacher Roberto for refining the smooth, sustainable stroke that allows her to streamline from shore to shore. I was surprised to learn she wasn’t immediately winning awards.
But it turned out that Santos never got a chance to compete.
“I had to quit at 15 to work and support my mother who was raising me and my siblings alone,” she explained. “My childhood was short but very well-lived. I became a mother at 19, which fueled my desire to leave in search of a better life for my daughter.”
That’s how she ended up in Madeira, arriving on the island in 2004. Five years later, she married Duarte on a boat overlooking the ocean. “At that time, I was still far from imagining that one day this same ocean would become such a significant part of my life, and that I would spend most of my days immersed in it.”
It wasn’t until 2015 that she dove embraced her long-lost childhood passion. She was 36 years old.
When you run, your knees will deteriorate; there are only so many tackles you can take before contact football becomes a part of the past; even golfers' elbows freeze with time. Swimming is different. As Steven Munatones, the director of the World Open Water Swimming Association, once put it to the New Yorker: If you want to, you can swim until the day you die. And that's what Santos intends to do. She estimates she’s already spent 2,160 hours swimming around Madeira’s coastline, including a 26-mile swim from Porto Santo to Madeira. Though several women had attempted such a feat, she was the first to complete it.
Her next challenge, circumnavigating Madeira in a single 89-mile leg, shouldn’t be that hard. But after that, she hopes to surpass the legend of ultramarathon swimmers like Diana Nyad, Neil Agius, and Chloë McCardel.
“I am determined to swim the longest distance in the open ocean,” Santos shared over WhatsApp, after I’d arrived home safe and sound. “I believe I have the physical and mental resilience. I just need a vast stretch of sea and financial assistance to cover the costs of the team, but I have the strength. I will prove it.”