Into the Blue is more than just a name — it’s a feeling.
A call to venture into the unknown, to dive deep into nature, and to find your way back to yourself.
How it began
In 2017, a friend who knew the area brought me to a quiet corner of Sri Lanka's south coast that most travellers never find. We walked down a jungle path — barely a track — and came out at an old colonial villa hidden in the trees, steps from the ocean.
I felt it immediately. A particular kind of stillness that you don't find everywhere. The kind that settles into your bones.
I'm a surfer. I've spent a lot of time in the water, chasing waves around the world. But I've learned that I need the jungle as much as I need the ocean. Spend too long in the sea and I get ungrounded — too floaty. The trees bring me back. The earth, the shade, the sounds of the garden at dusk. That balance between ocean and jungle is what Unakuruwa does better than anywhere else I've found.
I knew immediately this was where I was meant to build something.
Building Into The Blue
My name is Mahalia. I grew up in France, and I've always been drawn to places that feel alive — places where nature is close and life moves at a different rhythm.
After finding Unakuruwa, I spent the next year figuring out how to make this dream real. It wasn't easy. Construction in a small Sri Lankan village comes with its own set of rules — finding reliable local craftsmen, learning the right way to work with the community, navigating a building process that required patience, trust, and a lot of improvisation.
But something about that difficulty felt right. The property was built slowly, by hand, with local families who knew this land better than I ever could. The colonial villa was restored. The jungle cabins were built from scratch. The yoga shala rose up under the trees.
By 2018, Into the Blue opened its doors.
What we believe in
From the beginning, Into the Blue has been rooted in the community around it. Our surf coaches are local men from Unakuruwa who grew up in these waves. Our staff are from the village. We source food locally, work with nearby artisans, and support three local families whose livelihoods are tied to this place.
This isn't a resort dropped into a landscape. It grew out of it.
We believe that the best travel experiences happen when a place is genuinely connected to where it is — when the people, the food, the culture, and the land all belong to each other. That's what we try to offer every guest who walks through the gate.
What Into The Blue is today
Seven years on, Into the Blue has welcomed guests from across the world — solo travellers, couples, families, yogis, surfers, digital nomads, and retreat leaders who bring their own communities here.
We have four private jungle cabins, a colonial villa, a private two-bedroom villa, and two beach houses twenty metres from Unakuruwa Bay. We have a purpose-built open-air yoga shala in the jungle garden, daily yoga classes with international teachers, surf coaching with Chami on the bay, and massage treatments in nature.
But what guests come back for — and what they tell us they remember most — is harder to describe. It's the fireflies in the evening. The sound of birds before the yoga class begins. The way the light falls through the palm trees at sunset. The feeling of being somewhere that hasn't been packaged for tourism.
The feeling of Into the Blue.
Come and experience it for yourself.
Or if you're a yoga teacher or retreat leader interested in hosting your group here: Learn about retreat hosting →