Sunshinestories Surf & Yoga Retreat

Sunshinestories started as a travel blog by founders Petter & Linn, documenting their 3 year long journey around the world, searching for waves and the next adventure. The people they met turned into short stories, sunshinestories, stories of inspiring people living by the sea and following their dreams. The blog grew to be sponsored by brands as Billabong, GoPro and Bing Surfboards as the travels went on. Six years later the blog once again grew to something else, this time a real-life concept where everyone is welcome to create their own Sunshine Story.

We are a couple who share the same hunger for adventure, good food and surfing waves. We got together in school and as soon as we finished we bought a one way ticket to South Africa and decided we wanted to travel the world to surf. The year was 2009. We started sunshinestories.com a blog that became a way to keep in touch with family and friends but also a way for us to document our travels and our path. From South Africa, we continued to Bali via Laos and Thailand. We ‘found’ ourselves whilst travelling and learned many lessons we couldn’t have learned anywhere else. After that first trip, we didn’t feel like we were done traveling, so we continued. We surfed amazing waves, and ate great food and stumbled our way through Borneo, Lombok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Portugal, California, New York, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.

We got lost a lot of times. And we found the essence of life more times. The people we met during those trips have made us who we are today and also helped to shape sunshinestories. The sweethearts, the assholes, the surf pros, the yogis, the locals, the taxi drivers.
We got lost a lot of times. And we found the essence of life more times. The people we met during those trips have made us who we are today and also helped to shape sunshinestories. The sweethearts, the assholes, the surf pros, the yogis, the locals, the taxi drivers. The most inspiring people we met became “sunshinestories”, interviews we made about them and their life following their dreams. Almost on the day, six years later form when we first set out on our travels, Sunshinestories grew once again to something else, a lifestyle retreat tucked in under the palm trees in the Sri Lankan jungle. A real life concept where everyone can come live their own Sunshine Story. The concept quickly grew and we are fortunate to get people visiting from all over the world wanting to be part of the dream. Nowadays, Sunshinestories is so much more than just the two of us, it‘s a whole family. We are constantly searching for new people to join our dream and share it together with us and our guests here at Sunshinestories. Read on here, for more information on available positions. Sunshinestories has grown into a retreat where guests from all over the world can join in and create their own sunshine story. Since the weeklong retreats are exclusive for our checked in guests, we figured we needed another space where people could meet over good coffee & food in between sharing waves, Ceylon Sliders was born.

Ceylon Sliders is just that, a place where you can come and be part of a community, chat over just a coffee, have a drop in yoga session, stay, live, sleep, eat or surf. Whereas Sunshinestories is a whole experience, Ceylon Sliders offers shorter stays and less structure, guests are more ‘on their own’ on top of that there is also a cafe, shop, surf and yoga classes open to the public. Located on the beachfront in Weligama, the concept is similar to Sunshinestories in the way that it’s a place for everyone who loves surf, yoga & food however it’ s still something else.

These days we are out and about running between our two places and are are unfortunatley not able to spend as much time at the retreat. Since our company has grown quite a lot with more than 60 employees as of 1st January 2019 and hosting more than 1000 guests per year, we work a lot with keeping this dream alive and real behind the scenes and giving the resources and facilities to our amazing team of staff who are now part of Sunshinestories. You may see Petter pop in and out of the retreat and you may see us in the water sharing a few waves, but we are not working in the front of the house of the operations on a daily basis. You can find us on instagram @pettertoremalm and @linnklara. If you have read this far you are already part of our journey, thank you so much, keep on dreaming, surfing and adventuring, and remember to follow your own Sunshine Story.