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A Spanish extreme athlete who voluntarily isolated
herself from the world by entering a cave in November 2021 recently
emerged from her self-imposed exile after a record 500 days.
When female climber Beatriz Flamini entered an isolated cave in the
Spanish region of Granada on November 21, 2021, the world was still in
the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia had not invaded Ukraine, and
Elon Musk had not yet become the tzar at Twitter. Falmini was 48 years
old when she entered the cave, but she had turned 50 by the time she
stepped out of it and had no idea what had occurred in the outside world
in the last 500 days. Although she did not make contact with any other
humans, Beatriz was carefully observed by a team of scientists,
including psychologists and speleologists, in what is considered a
first-of-its-kind experiment.
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“I’m still stuck on November 21, 2021. I don’t know anything about the
world,” the extreme athlete told reporters as she exited the 70m (230ft)
deep cave for the first time. “I’ve been silent for a year-and-a-half,
not talking to anyone but myself.”
Smiling and wearing glasses to protect her eyes from sunlight after 500
days of darkness, the 50-year-old climber described her extreme
experience as “excellent, unbeatable”, promising to offer more details
after taking her first shower in almost a year and a half. She
apparently spent most of her time going through 60 books, exercising,
drawing and knitting wool hats.
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Flamini had to be held after exiting the cave, because her senses were
only beginning to adjust to the outside world, so she kept losing her
balance. She said that she stopped keeping track of time at one point,
after about two months, and estimated that she had been inside for
“between 160-170 days”, not 500.
Living in complete isolation for so long caused Flamini to experience
‘auditory hallucinations’, because “you are silent and the brain makes
it up”, but the toughest thing she had to put up with was an invasion of
flies inside the cave, which left her covered in the tiny insects.
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Beatriz Flamini’s team claim that her 500 days of complete isolation
count as a new world record, although Guinness has yet to confirm if
there is even a category for voluntary time living alone in a cave. More
importantly, the data gathered from her unique experience is expected to
be invaluable in the research on the impact of social isolation and
extreme temporary disorientation on people’s perception of time.
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