How a 50-year old woman happily spent 500 days in a cave
Beatriz Flamini chose to live all alone 230 feet underground. In a Spanish cave. With no direct contact with anyone outside for 500 days. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise folks, but when her 500-day adventure was up, she wasn’t ready to come out.
“When they came in to get me, I was asleep,” she says, according to Reuters. “I thought something had happened. I said: ‘Already? Surely not.’ I hadn’t finished my book.”
But she finished about 60 others during her period of underground living, which was closely monitored by psychologists and researchers—some looking at the physical effects on her body and others specializing in the study of caves.
She later added that she “never” thought about leaving the cave early. “In fact,” she says, “I didn’t want to come out.”
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Flamini, 50, entered the cave in Granada—northeast of Malaga—on Nov. 21, 2021. She didn’t get any updates about the world since the time she descended, and had instructed the team not to tell her of anything, even a family emergency. Instead of interacting with others, she read books, exercised, drew, painted, and knitted woolly hats.
“I’ve been silent for a year-and-a-half, not talking to anyone but myself,” she says, according to the BBC. “There was a moment when I had to stop counting the days.”
The mountaineering athlete said that after about 65 days, she stopped trying to keep track of how long she had been in the cave, and had guessed she was underground for about 160 to 170 days when her team came to get her. While not officially confirmed by Guinness, her team believes the 500 days is the world record for a voluntary time living in a cave.
Of course, living in a cave for 500 days isn’t without its difficulties. At one point, Flamini was covered by flies after an invasion. She also dealt with auditory hallucinations. “You are silent, and the brain makes it up,” she says.
There was one other hiccup—a purely above-world technical challenge with the router relaying audio and video of her cave experience to the team. The router went out and the fix required that she move out of the cave into a tent, remaining in isolation for the eight-day process.
The cave adventure has allowed scientists to study everything from social changes—such as time perception and disorientation—to physical changes in brain patterns and sleep.
While Flamini admitted that a shower, fried eggs and chips, and spending time with friends were next on the agenda, she was planning to let doctors continue to study her, especially before clearing her to continue mountaineering. Or, for that matter, any other cave adventures.
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