Beatrice Flamini He has already consummated his entry into history. The mountaineer and climber has abandoned this Friday the cave of Grenade in which he has spent the last 500 days to become the owner of world record for underground insulation. A brutal physical and mental experience that ended after 9:00 in the morning, when Flamini was received with hugs, applause and great expectation as she left the cavity where she had lived for almost a year and half.
The elite athlete has assured that she is “very grateful” for this “excellent” and “unbeatable” experience, and she was very clear about her first wish as soon as the challenge was completed: “Allow me to take a shower.” Something as everyday for ordinary mortals as it is atypical right now for Beatriz Flamini, who has lived 70 meters deep without any kind of luxury for longer than anyone.
It may interest you: Beatriz Flamini and her 500 days isolated in a cave
“I didn’t expect there to be so much interest,” Flamini acknowledged at the start of his first appearance before the media. It was not easy for her to face so much expectation after so long isolated. “Forgive me, but I’ve been alone for a long time and I can get saturated,” she said, apologizing even if her language wasn’t the most correct: “I’m sorry I made a mistake speaking. I haven’t spoken for a long time”.
It has practically not done so for 500 days. “I have not spoken to myself except when I was recording,” she has assured. “I am still stuck on November 21, 2021. I don’t know what has happened in the world. Seeing you all with a mask for me is still the covid. Not only 50 years old, I have also spent my 49 years inside the cave. There was a moment when I had to stop counting, on my 65th day. I already lost temporal perception the rest of the time ”, she has also recounted.
Flamini is very clear about his most difficult moment inside the cave: “The flies. There was an invasion of flies. Flies come in, you start to get long and suddenly I was wrapped in flies. It is complicated by health”. And what have you done to kill time for so many days? “Reading, writing, drawing, knitting, being, enjoying… I am where I want to be, experiencing what I want to experience.”
“I have missed everyone. Even myself ”, the athlete also recounted, who has revealed that she “never day ”has thought of leaving her. Furthermore: “In fact, I didn’t want to go out”.
In that “very friendly” cave, in his own words, “everything has been great, even at times when someone may consider that they can’t stand this.” Nothing has happened to Flamini “of what is written”, except “auditory hallucinations”. He has not even had “the feeling of missing everything that is on the outside.”
With a smile as his flag, he has not hesitated to affirm that “he would do it again”, although “with another project”. This may be in Mongolia, although he did not want to give details about what his next steps may be. Of course, they will have to do with “sports projects, in the mountains, in caves.”
The only interest that Beatriz Flamini has right now about what has happened abroad during her absence is “if the team is okay”. When they entered the cave to get her out, she was “sleeping, or at least dozing.” She thought that she “had to leave because something had happened”, not because the challenge had come to an end: “It has been difficult for me to enter ‘¿Already? It just can’t be'”.
The project timecave has had as a fundamental part the challenge to which Flamini has submitted from November 20, 2021. She wanted to prove herself and she has achieved it, also giving rise to a scientific analysis of her experience that will surely yield very interesting conclusions.
Everything began to take shape two years ago, when Beatriz herself contacted the producer Dokumalia and wanted to star in this authentic challenge. Offering, in addition, that the mental and physical repercussion that her challenge was going to suppose would be the object of various scientific studies. She also to star in a documentary series that narrates her daily life in the cave.
That experience has thrown all kinds of vicissitudes: food and water supplied at an intermediate point in the cavity where communication could not be maintained, exercises to keep fit, doubts of all kinds, problems, lack of memory and concentration, hallucinations, mood swings, the feeling that they are always four in the morning, eternal days and nights…
Hence, this world record has served to study the consequences of social isolation and temporary disorientation for the human body. Also the reason for carrying out this challenge and everything that has made it possible to overcome it. Like the possible neuropsychological and cognitive changes as a result of it. At the University of Granada and the University of Almería, they knew that the conclusions could be valuable in the scientific field and decided to follow Flamini’s company closely.
An experience for which they have been needed a ton and a half of material and foodconsuming 1,000 liters of water. You cannot ignore what may well be the main entertainment that the athlete has had while she isolated herself, reading: even 60 books have passed through his hands.
Furthermore, the cave where Beatriz Flamini has lived for the last 500 days was not chosen at random. A team of speleologists made sure that there was water, electricity and a system to ascend and descend safely. An emergency plan was also prepared for what could happen and Flamini’s state of health was closely monitored.
“We read each other again in April/May 2023. See you in the mountains.” These were the last words of his most recent Instagram post, prior to abandoning any type of contact and external reference. She has not even carried a watch with her during all this time, pulverizing the previous longest record of underground isolation both in Spain (103 days, five decades ago) and worldwide (the 269 days of the Italian Christine Lanzoni).
