Phil is from Barbados Islands and Corina from Switzerland. How many chances are there to meet and eventually fall in love?
It happened in 2014 when they were in Nicaragua for surfing. It sounds like the classical summer loven and surf romance, but their bond was definitely a special one.
Rise Up Surf Retreats is now the number one surf retreat business in Central America. Let’s chat with Phil to know about their story!
What are the main challenges of having a partner in life and in business?
Overall the main challenge is not being able to separate work-life and relationship-life as our life is our work.
We try to make time just for us to do things where we do not talk about anything to do with Rise Up. It could be a surf trip, a walk, a meal or pretty much anything.
Overall, when Corina and I met it was a blessing and having her join as a partner in Rise Up was really what helped us to continue to grow and develop and we are learning everyday as a team.
In 2018, you expanded the retreats location to Costa Rica, Barbados and Guatemala. Why did you choose these destinations?
We chose each destination due to a personal connection with each of them. We felt like we could offer something really fun and unique while keeping the Rise Up vibe.
I am from Barbados and there are really fun waves, so it was a logical decision. I had visited Guatemala on my first trip to Central America back in 2004 and surfed on a stretch of the coast where there were no local surfers or places to stay beside families and really enjoyed the waves and local people.
Since then, that local village called El Pardeon has gown into a vibrant travelers town. I had been back for several visits and on my last visit with Corina we found the place where we run retreats now and El Paredon managed to keep its really cool vibe while having great amenities, so we started retreats.
Then with Costa Rica it was a little more by chance as I had spent time in the far south years before. On vacation in Costa Rica 2017, we ended down south in the region, where we run retreats and fell in love with nature and the perfect waves. It left us with the idea to run one day retreats there, which of course we did.
Overall we decided to start retreats in other locations due to the political crisis in Nicaragua in summer 2018 where for a period of time we were unsure what the future of living and working in Nicaragua would be.
Thus we took the opportunity to offer retreats in new locations as we luckily after ten years have built up an incredible base of loyal guests who came on our first retreats in each destination.
Thankfully things did not get too bad in Nicaragua and we can live here still and have it as our home base.
The resorts you host the retreats have an eco-chic interior design. Did you have in advance the intention to target a specific type of customers?
Our intention was always and still is to create a magical life-changing experience focused around surf, yoga, incredible plant-based food, fun activities and most importantly, an authentic social connection between guests, staff and locals.
We chose locations where we could envision being able to offer this, but with the unique qualities of each destination. All the resorts we host retreats are places we personally stayed at, and spent time at, to feel if the vibe was right for our guests.
Then luckily people came and loved it, so we kept going and are continually working to make the experience better.
I wrote an article - in which you are mentioned - where I talked about vegan surf retreats and camps. Can you tell us more about your choice?
Rise Up was created with the vision to spread the passion and love of things I cared about which started with surfing, yoga, outdoor adventure, environment and healthy living and showcasing the magic of Nicaragua and its people which had been my home for a few years at the time.
I was a vegetarian and wanted to share that with people. The trick was always to have a wide variety of super delicious, nutrient-dense food throughout the week so even people who were sceptical about spending a whole week without meat at first ended up loving the food and in many cases not even missing meat.
Creating food has always been possible thanks to the amazing chef and team that we work with and, without their creativity, it would not be possible.
At this stage, we have a little locally caught fish and we make a dinner out so people can choose meat. It is not totally vegan, but definitely plant predominant and conscious of what and where our ingredients come from.
Rise Up Surf Retreats is taking care of community projects both for local kids and the environment. Where did you find the initial motivation to start and how it is going?
The initial motivation came from the love of the environment and the people around us and looking for a way to give a little more than employment.
We always did different projects from the start of Rise Up which ranged from sea turtle conservation, reforestation and a donation program to the local school, but we felt like we wanted to do even more and that is where the idea to start an official NGO came from.
The reason we called it Rise Up Kids was because everything really begins with children. They are the future and our vision is to make sure that the projects ultimately always have a direct or indirect benefit for kids in the local community.
Then thanks to a guest, Heather Martin, we were able to set up an official NGO in the US and we could finally take official donations and do more fundraising outside of just guests during the retreats.
The NGO has been set up for just over a year now and initially the plan was to start by focusing on the restoration and reconstruction of the local school in the community in Northern Nicaragua where we live and run Rise Up. We did the first stage of putting a new roof on and then Covid hit so we have shifted the focus for now to supplying families with basic food and sanitation needs. Rght now we have done this monthly for 120 families since June and we will continue until January.
In the future, we have so many ideas and dreams such as finishing the school project and integrating more sustainable farming to promote better nutrition, protect soils and also to offer alternative sources of income such as growing greens for hotels.
At the moment, we are working on building partnerships with individuals, businesses and NGOs that have different specialities so that we can implement specific projects.
We are also going to fully update our website to show the current and future project goals as well as to act as a platform to share the vision and mission of other people and projects working in Central America, especially in the areas we run retreats. In this way, people can directly find and support those projects as well.
Which are your best surf spots and why?
Phil : Nicaragua - Any one of the many long left hand point breaks we have in our area and the boom.
Corina: Costa Rica - I am a regular and a longboarder; thus why I fell in love with the long, mellow perfect rights we are able to surf in the south of Costa Rica.
Follow Rise Up on IG: @riseupsurfretreats and FB: @riseupsurf
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Interviewed by Irene Vannucci
Human rights enthusiastic, wipe-out lover and chocolate addict, Irene is collaborating with Surfpreneurs Club as Content Creator to inspire you with the most exciting ventures in the surf community.
