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A tourist drowned while cave tubing in the Cave’s Branch River yesterday and today the police, Archaeology Department, and the Tourism Board are investigating. As we told you last night, 50 year old Linda Linan and her husband Eduardo sailed in on Carnival’s Glory yesterday and went on a Bel-Cruise tour to Caves Branch. They were cave tubing with other tourists when fast currents got the best of them and Linda drowned. A post mortem was conducted today but that isn’t the end of the story because other tour operators in the area say that given the strong currents, the trip was ill-fated before it started. That’s why the Belize Tourism Board is investigating. Director of Product Development Laura Esquivel says it is too early to draw a conclusion.

Laura Esquivel, Director of Product Development
“From what we understand there are certain parts of the cave where there is a little bit of a rush in the waters and the information we have gotten so far is that the person who unfortunately drowned fell off of her tube and actually was swept under but in regards to the actual circumstances, we are still doing the investigation with people who were in the cave at the moment.”

Keith Swift,
Should those tourists have been cave tubing given the condition of the river yesterday?

Laura Esquivel,
“Well that is not for us to say, the park is actually managed by the Institute of Archaeology and they actually have guidelines which they follow for closure of the park or keeping it open and from what I have been told, because I spoke to them, is that the river levels were all within the levels they would see acceptable however they did give warnings to the operators who did choose to operate yesterday, that they should use caution and I must mention it is not only one operator that decided to still have tours, it was more than one.”

Keith Swift,
What can we expect to happen to the tour operator?

Laura Esquivel,
“Well the operator will be asked to give his version of what happened. I imagine that the police will also be doing an investigation. But in terms of the Tourism Board, the Tour Operators Licensing Committee will be asked to call the tour operator to answer to what happened yesterday.

Any bad publicity with any small incident like this can be blown up internationally especially in the day and age of the internet and email. So obviously we are expecting a little bit of a penalty tourist wise for this but all we can do is try to assure people that we are putting the measures in place to ensure this never happens again.”

The tour company was Bel-Cruise. The company declined comment and promised to send a release, but up to news time, that was not forthcoming. Linda Linan’s body will be transported back to her home town in Orlando Florida for burial.