Over time we´ve been many things: we started as an art gallery and cafe on the edge of the cloud forest. For a time we were the home of Jungle Groove and then Moon Shiva, two restaurants that became well known for their delicious food and relaxed ambiance. We thought about being a spa, but mostly concentrated on yoga and massage workshops. We´ve been known as a hot night spot that hosts national
and international musical guests - who usually end up mixing with the locals around the bonfire after the concert. We´ve always been about providing a special place where people can gather, hang out, and get to know the rich culture of Costa Rica. The property we´ve settled on originally belonged to Oscar Montein, the first cheese maker at the Monteverde Cheese Factory back in the 1950s. Bromelias, the building, was constructed in 1999, and the first shell of our little casita rose from its leftover materials. The garden started growing at the base of the grand old fig tree whose crown shades the property, and new plantings follow paths that wind their way over the hillside. Beginning in 2003, a cobwall hobbit house slowly took shape at the back fence line, and today if you see smoke rising from its chimney, that means someone lit the sauna. A natural addition was the hillside amphitheatre, inaugurated in January 2005, that does justice to the wide variety of music and theatre that we present - the venue was designed with great acoustics in mind, a canopy-style roof that lets you see the stars, and romanesque stone seating for 180 people. This has been the dream, and sometimes nightmare, of Patricia Maynard, a Costa Rican woman who moved to Monteverde in 1993. Patri arrived as a nature guide, leading groups through the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, and fell in love with life on the mountain. She brought her four-year old son, Mark, with her, and in 2000 she had a second son, Kyle, with her exhusband, Mark Wainwright. From 1994 until 2006, Patri managed the famous Hummingbird Gallery near the entrance to the Cloud Forest Reserve. In 2007, she moved her home into the former art gallery space at Bromelias and opened a music and book store in the cafe below. Patricia has produced a number of Cds with Costa Rican artists: two compilation Cds from the MONTEVERDE MUSIC FESTIVAL, a concert series that she directed from 1997 to 2010; and SIMBIOSIS (Manuel Obregon - 1999), piano and rainforest sounds recorded in the open air of Monteverde. Her latest project to be released in March of 2007 is NATTIVA: two three-time Grammy award winning musicians – composer/
percussionist, Carlos (Tapado) Vargas, and composer/multi-instrumentalist, Walter Flores - mix the sound of drums and primitive instruments with the natural music of Costa Rica, provided through recordings of nature sounds collected by Alex Villegas. Patricia now ponders her next project from the balcony overlooking the bromeliad garden – welcoming friends and visitors to sit back on the patio and listen to the rhythms and magical sounds that come from the sound system - and the garden itself. If music is the perfume of life, we´re wafting in it.
