Spanish woman emerges after spending 500 days alone in a cave

After spending 500 days by themselves in a dark cave 70 metres below the Earth's surface, plagued by insects and the occasional mouthwatering image of roast chicken, Beatriz Flamini was treated to a 50-minute news conference in which she attempted to explain the nearly unexplainable, according to The Guardian report.

After leaving her underground hideout in southern Spain a little after 9 am on Friday and visiting a doctor and a psychologist for a routine examination, Beatriz Flamini had to be a part of a press conference instead of getting a bath and some fresh air after so long.

While answering the media questions, she said, “I was expecting to come out and have a shower. I wasn’t expecting there to be so much interest.”

On Saturday, November 20, 2021, 3 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, reported The Guardian.

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.”

“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 and enjoying herself. She said, “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 added

She had managed to keep fit, plough through 60 books and use two cameras to record her experiences for a forthcoming documentary.

Responding to a question about if there were some points in the journey when she was tempted to hit the panic button and head back into the light.

Flamini thought for a moment and then remembered one particular insect incursion.

She shared, “There was an invasion of flies. They came in, they laid their larvae, and I didn’t control it, so I suddenly ended up enveloped by flies. It wasn’t that complicated, but it wasn’t healthy … but that’s just what it was.”

While she fell victim to an intense craving for roast chicken with potatoes, the solitude was less of a problem. Before she entered the cave, she told her team that she did not want to be told what was going on outside, even if it involved the loss of a loved one.

“The people who know me and love me respect that,” she said. “There’s no problem.”

Flamini sounded ever so slightly irked when recounting how she felt when the moment came to leave the cave. “I was sleeping or at least dozing when they came down to get me. I thought something had happened. I said: ‘Already? No way.’ I hadn’t finished my book.”

Nor was she dazzled by the daylight of the Andalucían spring. And it hadn’t just been the dark glasses she wore.

“I didn’t feel anything when I saw the light because, to me, it felt like I’d only just gone in there, so I didn’t have that sensation of missing the light and the sun and all that’s out there,” she said. “I’m being honest – I’m not going to lie.”

A Guinness representative was unable to quickly confirm whether Flamini had broken the record for the longest period of voluntary cave living.

The Guinness Book of Records website awarded the "longest time survived trapped underground" to 33 Chilean and Bolivian miners who spent 69 days 688 m (2,257 ft) trapped in 2010.