Arica, Chile ? The bus that crashed down a mountainside in Chile, killing 12 elderly American tourists, was not certified by local authorities to carry passengers and its operator was not among the tour groups vetted by the cruise ship, authorities said Thursday.

Celebrity Cruises said Andino Tours, whose white bus tumbled more than 300 feet Wednesday afternoon, wasn’t among the agencies it authorizes to run side trips for passengers during port stops. It also said the victims made their own arrangements to visit a national park.

Chilean officials said Andino Tours had not yet received official approval and the bus, which had a capacity of 16 passengers, wasn’t registered to carry tourists.

The crash – which also injured two American tourists as well as the Chilean tour guide and driver – reverberated half a world away in the communities the victims left behind.

“It’s a terrible tragedy. I have no words,” Rhoda Katz, 73, said at The Ponds, a retirement community in Monroe Township, N.J., where most of the victims lived.

The president of Celebrity Cruises, Dan Hanrahan, told reporters in Miami that the victims were part of a 64-member B’nai B’rith group traveling on the cruise ship Millennium.

When the ship docked in Arica, a port city near the Peruvian border surrounded by northern Chile’s wind-swept deserts, the tourists apparently made their own arrangements to visit Lauca National Park, a wild Andean refuge featuring dramatic geysers, herds of llamas and one of the world’s highest lakes.

They were returning to the Millennium when the bus swerved to avoid an approaching truck and plunged off the rugged highway, tumbling down a rocky incline and coming to rest on its side, City Hall spokesman Juan Carlos Poli said.

Rescue crews found the bodies of the victims spread in an area around the crushed bus. Recently purchased local handicrafts were scattered among their belongings.

Officials suspect the driver of the bus fell asleep, lead investigator Manuel Gonzalez told Radio Cooperativa.

U.S. consular officials headed to Arica, 1,250 miles north of the capital, Santiago, and Celebrity said it was flying victims’ relatives to the scene.