The house that began in midair
Alfredo and Jim, and the house they drew together.
Alfredo and Jim have shared a life for thirty-five years, twenty-eight of them in San Miguel de Allende. When they first came to Cien Colibríes, they thought it would be forever. Now they're starting to sketch a new chapter, and before they do, we go back with them to the first one: back when Cien Colibríes was still just an idea.
It started on a plane. Every time they flew, Alfredo and Jim booked seats across the aisle from each other. A cocktail napkin traveled back and forth between them. One would sketch, the other would add something and pass it back. And so, thirty thousand feet up, Cien Colibríes began to take shape.
Then came the land: grassland, mesquite, and a few nopales that had been there long before them. For the first two years, they didn't plant a thing. They gave themselves time to watch: where the dogs ran, where the water came down, how it all shifted with the seasons. The terraces, the steps, the places to sit came later.
That way of seeing still runs through everything they do: understanding what's already there before deciding what to change. With nature, they've never tried to take control. They've tried to learn to live alongside it and look after it. It's a sensibility Alfredo also brings to his role on the board of El Charco del Ingenio. So some things, they simply let be and when the mesquites bloom, they sit underneath. You don't need to see the bees. You can hear thousands of them at work.
That same patience shaped the house itself. While it was going up, everyone assumed they'd turn it toward the reservoir and fill the walls with picture windows for the sunset. Alfredo and Jim chose to look inward, toward the garden. "If we want to see the sunset, we go outside." That one line might say more about the house than any floor plan.
The birds were there long before Cien Colibríes, too. Alfredo and Jim have always shared that fascination, and for about thirty years they've been designing hummingbird feeders. Over time, that story found its way into the house. The swallows and hummingbirds painted across the ceilings came from their own hands.
They were never decoration. They were already part of who they are.
Hummingbirds, especially, have followed them far beyond the garden. By watching them, they've learned their rhythms, the flowers they seek out, the way they approach water, and how all that impossible speed can suddenly come to a stop in front of a feeder.
Camino Silvestre is part of that life, too. Their shop in San Miguel brings together many of the things Alfredo and Jim have discovered, designed, and made part of their own lives over the years. Among them are the feeders they've spent decades imagining and refining. Because for them, watching birds has never been just about looking at them. It's about learning what they need to stay close, and then making a little room for them.
At Cien Colibríes, that room is everywhere.
Aguamiel
There's another word Alfredo and Jim use to describe their life here: Aguamiel.
Growing what they eat is part of it. They've been vegan for thirteen or fourteen years, and the garden has grown up right alongside that choice. But around food there's something else, something that goes back long before Cien Colibríes.
"In every house we've had, people end up in the kitchen," Jim says. "I designed this one to work just as well for four as for sixty."
And it has. A couple of years ago, they began opening Cien Colibríes for dinners. First once a month, then every other week. The menu never repeats, and more than four hundred people have already found a seat at the table.
Every year, Jim also grows herbs that are hard to find in San Miguel and gives the seedlings away to hundreds of people. At Cien Colibríes, growing and cooking almost always end up in the same place: sharing.
The pond holds another part of that life. Before the water lilies and the koi, it was a swimming hole. They'd spend entire afternoons in the water. During the pandemic, it became their oasis. They ate there every day and could stay for hours, watching to see which birds would come.
For years, Cien Colibríes has been full of friends, and it still is. Some stay for a few days; meals stretch on; voices linger in the kitchen late into the night. Over time, Alfredo and Jim came to understand that a house so open to others also needed a place to retreat. And so the private wing came to be: a courtyard of their own, a door that closes and, on the other side, the same garden.
Perhaps this is something they have learned after so many years of living and welcoming people here: being together doesn’t mean always being in the same place. Cien Colibríes has learned to hold both — full tables and quiet mornings, doors left open and doors closed for a while, sharing and disappearing for a little while, too. Because welcoming people also means knowing when to let them simply be. “Closing that door gave us room. And it gave everyone else room, too.”
Never quite finished
Cien Colibríes began with Alfredo and Jim passing a napkin back and forth across an airplane aisle. One would draw something and leave room for the other to keep going. Maybe that's one of the most beautiful things about a house: it's never quite finished being drawn.
