Tour Guides Take Life-Saving Training
A number of tour guides wrapped up the first in a series of life-saving rescue training today. The exercise which began last Friday under the tutelage of the Belize Institute of Search and Rescue Training, BISART, took place in the Belmopan area. It included technical training that deal with outdoor activities that oftentimes put tourists in potentially risky situations. News Five spoke with Wendy Garcia who spearheaded the exercise and Nikolai Alvarado, who is the President of BLAST, which stands for the Belize Local Association of Stakeholders in Tourism.
Wendy Garcia
Wendy Garcia, Director, BISART
“Once you take the training, it’s valid for one year, So we conduct a training basically every month. We try to conduct one once we have the numbers, and so right now we have basically one group for this month and then hopefully next month we got another group, two groups actually this month.”
Marion Ali
“So right now it’s tour guides that you’re training?”
Wendy Garcia
“Yes, right now we have basically a group of tour guides, so, this is basically from BLAST, which Mr Nikolai is in charge of. So,we have been coordinating this process for over a couple months now, and it’s good to have finally put it into play.”
Nikolai Alvarado, President, BLAST Association
“It’s a training for tour guides, you know, and technical skills when it comes to rope, rappelling. water rescue, confined space, safety. So, we had reached out to the BISART the NGO Belize Institute for Search and Rescue [Training], and we have been back and forth communicating with them and with the help of the Belize Tourism Board. This was made possible because this training is a very, very, technical training, and it helps the guys to build their skills in their everyday use, because especially like right now, the caves are flooded, and they have been reopened two days ago, but, when you go in there now, with these skills that these guys are learning now, they will have a more knowledge of how to maneuver inside the cave, and how to help each other, or guess if something actually occurs inside of the cave. So this is a skill that the guys will use, I will say, every day on their job.”
