USP Porto Santo is a small island just 25 miles from Madeira. Unlike its larger more famous neighbour, which has no natural beaches, Porto Santo boasts 9km of golden sand beaches. The fine-grained sand on these beautiful beaches are said to contain an extraordinary high level of strontium which is believed to have health benefits particularly for rheumatism and dermatological conditions.
Locals have for many years sworn by the medicinal properties of the island’s sand and sea water. This spa, at the island’s oldest hotel (built in 1962), opened last summer and while it offers many more conventional spa treatments it is the hot sand therapy that is its speciality.
AMBIENCE This enormous 1,500 square metre spa, designed by renowned Portuguese architect Joao Favila, feels a little like an Egyptian temple. You enter the huge rectangular concrete and limestone structure via a tall narrow entrance. Inside the cool cavernous atrium is still, quiet, and bathed in daylight. There are no external windows but light streams in from a glass ceiling and courtyard garden into the interior of pink marble, exposed brick work and wood. The staff wear white coats, and speak in hushed conspiratorial tones – this is Porto Santo’s first medi-spa and it feels like a cross between a rehab clinic and a holy place.
The main hall of the spa contains a large seating area, café area, courtyard garden, and indoor pool. Off this main hall is an impressive huge round doomed pink marble hamman, four white-tiled medicinal-looking treatment rooms, a small gym and tiny functional white-tiled changing rooms. The main event, the hot sand therapy, takes place behind the reception desk. Behind a low pink marble wall there is a waiting area with a line of chairs facing a glass wall behind which stand a row of 12 copper coffin-like baths.
EXPERIENCE As four of us sit, clad in white robes, on the chairs facing the copper baths we are advised to drink plenty of water and told that to get the maximum effect from our treatments we should not have had any alcohol, caffeine, meat or fish for 24-hours – at which point I’m seriously regretting staying up late drinking vodka and tonics the night before.
We are also told by a very serious woman, dressed in the obligatory white coat, that scientific studies have proven that hot sand therapy – in which patients are buried up to their necks in sand heated to about 40 degrees centigrade for 30 minutes twice a day for a minimum of seven days – aids general well being and is an effective treatment for several medical conditions.
After this short introductory speech we each silently fill in extensive medical questionnaires and a doctor takes our blood pressure – those with particularly high or low blood pressure are advised not to have the treatment – one patient is told she shouldn’t have therapy because she has heat sensitive eczema.
We are then each handed cotton wool to put in our ears – to prevent sand getting in. It all seems very serious and a sense of panic is beginning to well up inside me. As I am led away to my sand bath the two remaining patients look on from the waiting room with deadly serious expressions.
When I arrive my bath is part-filled with soft warm dry sand. The doctor and her assistant help me in. Then an elderly man holding what looks like an over-sized vacuum cleaner pipe guides the fine warm sand from the pipe – which is plugged into the wall behind - into the bath and the two women scoop it over my body until I am buried.
It feels strangely like a warm cuddle. I feel snug - and somewhat smug - as I try to signal to the others that I’m ok but with only my head poking out of the sand it is a little difficult. The doctor and her assistant slide a heat-holding cover over my sand bath leaving just my head exposed, they place a cool flannel on my forehead, smile and leave. I suddenly feel very, very alone.
We were told that patients feel so relaxed enveloped in the soft warm sand that they often sleep during treatments. But within a short space of time I find the soft warm sand is beginning to feel seriously hot and heavy. I have a strong compulsion to move my arms but they are pinned down beneath the weight of the sand. I take a few deep breaths to reassure myself that my chest can still move under the weight. The sand feels as if it is getting hotter and hotter and heavier and heavier.
I imagine screaming and not being heard by anyone (my neighbour - in a copper bath behind a curtain partition - has cotton wool in her ears), I imagine dramatically breaking free, showering sand everywhere, like the Incredible Hulk breaking free from his skin-tight tee-shirt. I breathe slowly and deeply, close my eyes and try unsuccessfully to wriggle my toes.
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