After spending 500 days alone in a dark cave 70 metres below the Earth’s surface, assailed by a plague of flies and the odd tantalising vision of roast chicken, most people would be craving a wash and some company. Spanish woman emerges after spending 500 days living alone in cave.
But after emerging from her subterranean lair in southern Spain a little after 9am on Friday and having a quick checkup with a doctor and a psychologist, Beatriz Flamini was treated instead to a 50-minute press conference in which she endeavoured to explain the almost inexplicable.
“I was expecting to come out and have a shower,” she told the room full of reporters. “I wasn’t expecting there to be so much interest.” That was one of Flamini’s rare miscalculations.
On Saturday 20 November 2021 three months before Russia invaded Ukraine – the elite sportswoman and extreme mountaineer entered her Stygian lodgings in the cave outside Granada, determined to learn more about how the human mind and body can deal with extreme solitude and deprivation.
Monitored by a team of scientists from the universities of Almería, Granada, and Murcia, who kept in touch through special, limited messaging technology, the 50-year-old athlete from Madrid is now thought to have broken the world record for the longest time a person has spent alone in a cave.
Flamini told the media that she had lost track of time after day 65. Asked how she had succeeded in keeping herself sane for so long, Flamini pointed to her extensive experience and mental preparation, adding: “I got on very well with myself.” Spanish woman emerges after spending 500 days living alone in cave.
“For me at least, as an elite extreme sportswoman, the most important thing is being very clear and consistent about what you think and what you feel and what you say,” she said. “It’s true that there were some difficult moments, but there were also some very beautiful moments and I had both as I lived up to my commitment to living in a cave for 500 days.”
Flamini said she passed the time calmly and purposefully by reading, writing, drawing, knitting – by enjoying herself: “I was where I wanted to be, and so I dedicated myself to it.” Put bluntly, the trick was living in the here and now: “I’m cooking; I’m drawing … You have to be focused. If I get distracted, I’ll twist my ankle. I’ll get hurt. It’ll be over and they’ll have to get me out. And I don’t want that.”
She had managed to keep fit, plough through 60 books, and use two cameras to chronicle her experiences for a forthcoming documentary.
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