On Sri Lanka’s south coast, a once scrappy beach village is now the off-grid headquarters of a new wave of multi-tasking, surf-loving entrepreneurs from all over the globe
It always starts with rumours of a beach. Some place where the surf is steady and life is slow. Maybe in Byron Bay. Or Canggu. Or Kauai. Where travel-weary wanderers look to finally put down roots, or big-city-burnouts head for a barefoot new life. Recently, that mythical magnet has been a tiny speck on the south coast of Sri Lanka: Hiriketiya. A spot where surfers and yogis, potters and designers, all full of big ideas, have arrived and set up their ever-growing number of projects between ocean and jungle.
‘Hiriketiya was love at first sight,’ says South African-born Peni Wick, who moved here with husband Jeremy Klynsmith in April 2016. ‘We arrived in January on a month-long trip to scout out where to live, having given ourselves a deadline to quit our jobs in design and sales in Dubai. We’d planned a whole itinerary, but began in Hiri and basically never left. We knew we’d found something special: a small, horseshoe-shaped bay covered in coconut trees with a long left-hand point break for decent surfers and a sandy beach break for beginners. It ticked all the boxes.’
But they had to find a way to make a living. The answer was Verse Collective, which opened last December – a co-working space, café, hostel and surf shop, with a skate half-pipe out back. ‘Verse was a way to live the lifestyle, a business we enjoy to sustain it and a platform to create some change,’ explains Wick. These days you’re as likely to find her whipping up flat whites for the colourful bunch of novelists, filmmakers, designers and musicians who pass through the art-daubed, polished-concrete space as developing a line of products with local artisans to sell at the boutique.
Perhaps the perfect embodiment of these nimble project-juggling settlers, though, is half-Austrian, half-Sri Lankan Jessica Fernando, who launched accessories label Kinsfolk with her sister, producing rings with blue sapphires from Kandy and Batik scarves printed in the south. A potter, she crafts hand-painted ceramics in muted shades and plates with the mantra ‘Everything is in retrograde’ around the rim. She runs Soto House, a beautifully minimal villa to rent, with her boyfriend, half-Swiss, half-Mexican Renato Soto. The couple are also in the process of creating Mond, which will be a hotel, a café pulling Sri Lankan speciality coffee, a rooftop bar serving cocktails and sharing plates, and an artist residence and studio that they hope will evolve into a creative hub. They even home-brew the kombucha that will be served in the café and make the herbal soaps you’ll find in the bathroom.
Fernando and Soto moved here from Switzerland just over two years ago, after Soto, who owned a surf-inspired concept store in Zürich, scouted the bay while looking for waves on Google Maps. ‘We both grew up in landlocked countries, so have huge appreciation for the healing power of the ocean,’ says Fernando. ‘But what we both love most about Hiriketiya is the freedom it gives us.’
Bondi Beach native Georgia Muller was one of the first to wash up in the bay, arriving in 2013 with her partner Marty and six months pregnant with their son. ‘We had been discussing moving to Bali, but then someone told us about Sri Lanka. We stumbled upon Hiri. It was overcast, we pulled up near a storm drain, there were a few mangy dogs on the beach and a perfect point break.
Marty said, “This is it.” And I cried. I couldn’t see what he could then, but the following year we opened the Beach House, one of the first places to stay here, and have watched the bay blossom,’ she says. ‘It was only a year ago I started learning to surf, though. It changed my life here – it changed my life altogether. It’s the most beautiful feeling, like a moving meditation.’ A naturopath with a line of organic powdered herbs in Australia, Muller has just launched The Corner, a store selling prints by Sri Lankan artists, intricately patterned Indian cotton dresses and eco-friendly string bags and two rooms to rent, each set off its own blush-pink courtyard.
The scene is constantly swelling: Australians Cristal Napper and Rob Dixon are behind the ever-growing Salt House, a guesthouse, yoga shala and restaurant that dishes up fish and chips to take to the beach. And at Dots Bay House, a hostel hub that also includes a café and surf shop, you can usually run into Evy Ferraro, a British-born dancer turned yoga-and-Pilates teacher, somatic-movement educator and massage therapist. Then there’s Simon Udy and his partner Melissa, who moved from Byron Bay to set up The Grove, where they serve ‘breaky greens’ for brunch and mahi-mahi tacos at dinner.
‘Paradise doesn’t stay secret forever,’ adds Muller. ‘Hiri has gone from truly undiscovered to a buzzing little beach town practically overnight. But part of the beauty of living here is still the slow pace of life. It allows you to take it all in so much more deeply.’
