A Carvoeiro-based swimmer is turning a personal reset into something visitors and locals can join. Mariana Santos, a 43-year-old former national champion and first Portuguese woman to swim the English Channel, is launching open-water swimming lessons along the Algarve coast, with free introductory sessions already on offer.
The idea is simple: plenty of people can swim in a pool but freeze at the thought of open sea. Santos wants to build a year-round club where mixed ages and abilities swim together, guided by someone who admits she still feels that same flicker of fear before getting in. Sessions are planned around Carvoeiro, Armação de Pêra, Alvor, Vau and Lagos, and she speaks English, Spanish and Portuguese, so holidaymakers are very much welcome. The project is being formalised through Animame, the non-profit behind her Swim Party event, which pulled in 130 athletes this year and once drew 38 people to a 7am free swim at Carvoeiro.
Her route here was anything but linear. Santos was a national swimming champion at 13, then moved into visual journalism, joining The Guardian in London in 2010 to work on data storytelling for its WikiLeaks coverage. She later founded Chicas Poderosas, a women's empowerment network that spread across Latin America, before burnout and funding struggles brought her back to Portugal in 2020. Restoring her grandparents' farm in Alcantarilha, she used swimming to recover from depression, and the sea swims kept getting longer.
The final nudge came from the English Channel. Invited by German swimmer Nathalie Pohl, she joined a four-woman relay – with Mariam Binladen and Jasmine Harrison – marking 100 years since the first female Channel crossing, and became the first Portuguese woman to complete it. Mid-crossing, at nearly midnight before her third hour in the water, she counted from one to 100 to steady her breathing and jumped in anyway. "I feel like a different person after the English Channel," she says, and that transformation is exactly what she hopes to pass on.
For travellers, this is a genuinely different way to experience the Algarve beyond beaches and golf. A guided morning swim off Carvoeiro or near Lagos gives you the coastline from sea level, with safety and company, whether you're a confident swimmer curious about open water or a pool regular who has never swum in the sea. The project is still taking shape, but anyone keen can reach her via Instagram at @marysaints or @animameopenwateralgarve for session updates.
There's also a longer-term storyline to follow: Santos is weighing up the Oceans Seven, a brutal series of solo sea crossings that would need sponsorship and years of preparation. Either way, she seems settled. "Things still get done here in the Algarve, but at a normal pace," she says. "I have goals, I feel much calmer, and I've gained an enormous quality of life."
