A 50-year-old Spanish extreme sportswoman is claiming a new world record after spending 500 days living in a cave with no contact with the outside world.
Beatriz Flamini emerged from the cave 230ft below the ground outside Granada in southern Spain and said the experience had been “excellent”, adding that time had flown by.
She was greeted by members of her support team wearing masks so as not to pass on infections to her and later told reporters: “When they came in to get me, I was asleep. I thought something had happened. I said: ‘Already? Surely not.’ I hadn’t finished my book.”
Asked if she ever thought about pressing her panic button or leaving the cave, she replied: “Never. In fact I didn’t want to come out.”
Ms Flamini’s support team said she has broken a world record for the longest time spent in a cave in an experiment closely monitored by scientists seeking to learn more about the capacities of the human mind and circadian rhythms.
She was 48 when she went into the cave, and celebrated two birthdays alone underground.
She began her challenge on Saturday, Nov. 20, 2021 - before the outbreak of the Ukraine war, the cost of living crisis, the end of Spain’s lengthy COVID mask requirement and the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Flamini spent her time underground exercising, painting, drawing and knitting woolly hats. She took two GoPro cameras to document her time, and got through 60 books and 1,000 litres of water, according to her support team.
She said she had focused on retaining “coherence”, eating well and relishing the silence. She looked forward to treats such as avocados, fresh eggs and clean t-shirts her support team sent down.
“I didn’t talk to myself out loud, but I had internal conversations and got on very well with myself,” she joked.
“You have to remain conscious of your feelings - if you’re afraid that’s something natural but never let panic in or you get paralysed.”
She insisted her team had been told to contact her under no circumstances, even about a death in the family. “If it’s no communication it’s no communication regardless of the circumstances. The people who know me knew and respected that.”
Flamini was monitored by a group of psychologists, researchers, speleologists - specialists in the study of caves - and trainers who monitored her physical and mental wellbeing.
Her experience is being studied by Spanish scientists to determine the impact of social isolation and extreme temporary disorientation on people’s perception of time, the possible neuropsychological and cognitive changes humans undergo underground and the impact on circadian rhythms and sleep.
Flamini said she was now looking forward to a shower and sharing a plate of fried eggs and chips with friends. She said she would put herself in the hands of doctors to study the impact on her body and mind, before planning new mountaineering and caving projects.
The Guinness Book of Records website awards the “longest time survived trapped underground” to the 33 Chilean and Bolivian miners who spent 69 days underground after the collapse of a copper-gold mine in Chile in 2010.
A spokesman for Guinness was not able to immediately confirm whether there was a separate record for voluntary time living in a cave and whether Flamini had broken it.
