Beatriz Flamini was 40 years old when she asked herself what she wanted to do with her life. At that time, he probably did not think that he would set a world record by spending 508 days in the depths of the earth completely alone, isolated from the outside world.
Beatriz Flamini loved being alone since she was a small child. He grew up in Madrid and even then spent a lot of time alone in his room. It was never a problem for him to keep himself busy, since he “taught” the toy dolls math or history. When he was younger, he thought that one day he would become a professor, just like Indiana Jones. However, life took him in a completely different direction. Beatriz visited a cave for the first time in the 1990s, because at that time she was studying to be a sports instructor: as she says, she couldn’t find words for what she felt while caving, but at that time she didn’t have an even deeper connection to the caves.
The existential crisis
After graduating, Beatriz taught aerobics in her hometown and was pretty good at it. His students admired him for his commitment. In 2013 – when he had already turned 40 – he had almost everything a man could wish for. He had a relationship, a car, a house, and of course a good job. Regardless, he didn’t feel good, he didn’t really care about financial stability, and he didn’t want children either. So he asked himself the big question: “What do you want to do with your life?” Beatriz clearly remembers that the immediate response was: grab your backpack and go live in the mountains.
The woman moved to central Spain, where she began working on tall structures. Beatriz found her new job tiring yet fulfilling, but she continued to spend most of her time alone and even lost contact with her family. Beatriz told the New Yorker that after that she started living in an RV, which she loved even though the door got stuck in the winter and she was stuck in the RV for days at a time. Apparently, he longed for a peaceful life, but the outside world still did not leave him alone, as he was robbed several times.
The big decision
After the restrictions due to the coronavirus epidemic were lifted, the woman felt it was time to move down from the mountains. He had a great desire to cross the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. It was a great motivation for him when he learned that only one European could cross it on foot. That’s why he didn’t hesitate, he started preparing. He prepared for the Gobi expedition by hiking steep mountain trails while carrying a backpack weighed down with water bottles. There was no problem with his physical preparation, but he could not prepare for the mental test, so he decided to prepare for the solitude of the Mongolian desert in a cave.
An image from a video taken with a GoPro camera
We have already read about people who survived the cave conditions for a long time. In the modern world, for example, the record was 463 days, which was broken by Serbian Milutin Veljkovic. Still, no one had ever lived in a cave like Beatriz imagined.
They wore watches or talked on the phone every day
Beatriz wanted to spend 500 days completely alone in the cave, without any means of communication. He was told that it was impossible to stay down that long, as he would need more than 2,000 servings of food and 250 gallons of water to survive. The climber knew he would need a team, and because of permits, he agreed to place a security camera, a panic button and a computer in the cave. They also wanted to install Wi-Fi for data transmission, but Beatriz wouldn’t accept any device that would allow them to connect to her.
His basic goal thus remained completely intact: he did not see or communicate with another person for 500 days. He didn’t even want to see his own face.
“I wanted a complete disconnection” – He told. And after a lot of organization and preparation, the expedition took place. Beatriz put on a helmet, shouldered her large bag, hooked a carabiner on a guide rope and descended into the depths.
At a press conference, Beatriz said she enjoyed her time in the cave so much that she came to the surface singing. During this time, she read dozens of books, drew pictures, knitted hats and worked out.
Everyone thought I would come out as a zombie, but no!
However, the climber wasn’t nearly as cheerful during his time down there.
“Darkness chokes life”
As he recalled more and more what had happened, the cave explorer said that he would not recommend this experience to anyone. “I haven’t really lost consciousness, but the darkness chokes the life” he told me.
In the beginning, the woman kept a diary, but as the days passed, her sense of time became more and more impaired. He may have been in his third month when he started making up random imaginary words, but he also started hallucinating. He wrapped himself in his sleeping bag and then he heard a drum beat, then he thought that the shaman was trying to send him a message. The spiders on the walls were soon replaced by imaginary dolls, just like the ones Beatriz played with when she was little. The team viewed the woman from the outside and some expressed concern about her condition. There was speculation that he would be brought out of the cave, but a sports psychologist said the hallucinations were not that worrying.
“In the cave, the timeline disappears and everything floats around you. No past, no future. It’s just present, everything happened a long time ago, and it’s all brutally strange.”
Beatriz Flamini after leaving the cave in Los Gauchos on April 14, 2023 (Photo: JORGE GUERRERO / AFP)
Beatriz tried to keep track of time through her menstrual cycle, but it had become so erratic that there was only one way. He always took the waste to the exchange point after five bowel movements, so that was the only time signal for him.
He needed a Wilson
After more than half a year, she could barely lift her leg, and at this stage, the woman was able to perform far fewer activities than before. There was a moment, he said, when he thought he was dying.
There was no difference between what I felt then and what we interpret as death.
Just like Tom Hanks in Outcast, Beatriz in the cave also needed a Wilson, which in this case was a GoPro. Sometimes she curled up next to the camera, and other times she danced in front of it, staring off into the distance. By the end of the expedition, the climber was probably no longer so fond of caves, but he managed to achieve his goal. Beatriz spent a total of 508 days down in the cave, completely alone, isolated from the outside world.
Beatriz Flamini spent more than 500 days in the dark, cut off from the outside world (Photo: JORGE GUERRERO / AFP)
It had serious physical effects
After Beatriz left the cave, her first journey led immediately to the hospital. He had a fever and the doctors ran various tests on him. Although everything was found in order, there were still visible physical signs of the time spent below. He walked unsteadily and his back was bent. He told the newspaper that his balance began to deteriorate significantly, and his pupils had not yet adapted to the bright light. He admitted that his short-term memory in the cave became fuzzy and remained so. He also lost most of his peripheral vision underground. The caver does not yet know when his trip to Mongolia will take place, as he has lost a lot of muscle mass, of which he has only regained some.
The experts used the climber’s time below to study the effects of social isolation and extreme temporary disorientation on people’s perception of time.
