Something You Didn't Know About Bella!    Does our E-zine look strange in your email? Read it online here. Two months have gone by since our newsletter was last sent to you, due to a combination of travel assignments and hard work that continues on our new section about Sucre for the site. Over fifty pages of information on Sucre are in the making and will be ready very soon. In the meantime, Editor Alison Donald returned from England and Bella traveled to numerous places. We hope you’ll find our October edition worth the wait!
Alison, our newsletter editor, recently traveled back to England for a couple of months and really missed Bolivia: “As I write this I am 10,000 Kms. and 5 time zones from Bolivia. Reading that feels worse than going over it in my head…” she says. She’s back now, thank goodness, but many expats go through this when they return “home”. See what she missed the most!
 Most people don’t know that although I mostly grew up in Bolivia, I actually lived for four years in Cuenca, Ecuador first, between the ages of 4 and 8. In fact, it’s where I learned the somewhat sing-songy Spanish I speak that causes Bolivians to notice my accent isn’t “typically” Bolivian. Surprise! So just to shake things up a bit this month, I thought I’d share with you a slideshow of a trip I recently took to Quito, capital of Ecuador, where I worked for 9 days in early October. Quito bills itself to tourists as “the middle of the world” because the equator runs directly through this area of the Earth. You can actually stand on both sides of the equator at the same time and you’ll literally be in both the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres simultaneously. Quito was also named the Culture Capital of the Americas for 2011! It is considered one of South America’s most beautiful colonial cities and I agree that it is! Click on the image above to play the video and enjoy!
Readers: what are some of your favorite tourist attractions in Bolivia? Share your Bolivia travel story here.
When you can’t get to Bolivia (in Alison’s case thanks to bureaucracy), then Bolivia needs to come to you. Here’s how…
A little while ago Alison traveled to Tarija and while she was there she reviewed not one, not two, but three restaurants for us. Take a look:
On a trip to the supermarket I was really pleased to find that tree tomatoes were being promoted by way of leaflets with ideas for recipes. Tree tomatoes are rich in…Read more…
 Today's column is an E-Zine investigative report on "What Happened to the Coca Cola?" Not everyone seemed to notice, but last December it was suddenly difficult - indeed, some days impossible - to put one's hands on a bottle of Coca-Cola's diet or "Zero" products… I thought there would be a general sense of outrage....
Read these air travel tips to be sure you get the best flights and cheapest tickets as often as you possibly can! 15 ways to get the cheapest flights!
November 1 Todos Santos (Spanish for All Saints Day) is a traditional Catholic holiday celebrated on November 1 each year throughout the world, including Bolivia. On this day people honor all the Catholic saints, whether canonized or not. Read more...
BoliviaBella fields many questions from kids around the world who are studying about Bolivia for school. One of the most popular questions we get through our kid’s forum is “how do people dress in Bolivia?” Bolivian clothing, dress and hat styles differ by region. Because there are so many cultures and ethnic groups in Bolivia, it’s impossible to speak of “typical Bolivia clothes”…. Read more…
In Bolivia Christmas (Navidad) continues to be deeply religious, maintaining the original meaning and purpose of the holiday. Read more about how we celebrate Christmas in Bolivia.
 Through our BoliviaBella Expat Services division, we offer many services that are helpful to incoming expats in Santa Cruz. One of these is a monthly Expat Meet which we organize in Santa Cruz so you can meet other foreigners (from many countries) or make new friends. This is an especially great opportunity if you’ve just moved to Bolivia and don’t yet know many people. It’s family friendly, fun and we visit a different place each month. If you’d like to be included on our secure mailing list, click here and sign up to receive invitations. Readers: I’d like to remind you that you can also visit my other website www.GoSouthExpat.com. It’s an online forum community exclusively for expatriates in South America. Be sure to enter our Reading Rooms where you’ll find hundreds of articles on making the best of your life overseas.
One of our new Bella News E-zine features is our “Ask Bella” section. We get a lot of email and questions in our forums – more than we can handle sometimes - and we can’t answer them all personally. So we’re now giving you the opportunity to ask your questions on this special page. We’ll feature the response to one Reader question in each of our monthly newsletters. Have you got a nagging question about Bolivia that you just can’t find the answer to? Click here to Ask Bella!
Chef Noly visits BoliviaBella and posts Bolivian recipes and interesting articles about Bolivian culture each month on Wacataya Wednesdays. August is the month in which Santa Cruz celebrates its customs and traditions. One of the most unusual foods eaten in the department of Santa Cruz is TATÚ. Find out what tatú is!
Bridget from Pennsylvania wrote in to ask where on earth one can find sour cream in Bolivia. Someone answered they hadn’t found it in 15 years. Being a sour cream lover myself, I suggested she learn to make it because it just isn’t usually available here. This was a year ago! Bridget (and the numerous other expats who have mentioned missing sour cream): today I found sour cream in a Santa Cruz supermarket! Find out where to find sour cream in Bolivia!
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The Message Board is where I post messages about things I think you might be interested in throughout the month. Anything goes as long as it’s useful! Check it out daily – things change here quickly. You can also subscribe to my blog to get updates each and every time I add or modify a page. It’s the best way to stay informed between issues of this Ezine! You'll find interesting news, great flight deals, reviews of new books about Bolivia, highlighted articles, and anything else that's useful to Bolivia tourists and expats.
Bella Store is a great place to shop for South American gifts and Bolivian souvenirs all year long. Shop for alpaca sweaters, Andean handicrafts, leather, ceramics, arts, souvenirs and more. Bella Store is a National Geographic and Novica affiliate. When you Shop the National Geographic Store! All purchases support research, education, conservation, and exploration.
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We had a lot of new BELLA NEWS subscribers this month - welcome to the BoliviaBella online community. For those of you who don't yet know, "Bella" is actually an American living in Bolivia. She works as a professional translator and interpreter and also spends countless hours designing this site just for you! Find out
who is Bella really??As you can see, we've been very busy working super hard to grow and improve BoliviaBella.com and make it the number one English site on Bolivia. Parts of the site are also being translated into Spanish due to the large number of visitors we have from Spanish-speaking countries. We're always looking to improve - this site is FOR YOU so be sure to let us know what you want to see included on BoliviaBella.com - we're not on our way to NUMERO UNO for nothing - we're working very hard to get there!! Please direct your comments to webmaster "Bella". Tell Bella what you want!
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