A Spanish mountain climber emerged Friday from a cave in Granada after spending 500 days with no human contact and completely isolated from the outside world.
Beatriz Flamini, of Madrid, climbed out of the Los Gauchos cave near Motril, in southern Spain around 9 a.m., local time.
She entered the cave on Nov. 21, 2021 as part of a project called Timecave, designed to investigate the effects of isolation on a person’s body and mind.
Flamini, 50, was 48 when she descended around 230 feet to spend nearly 17 months in isolation.
Members of her team would drop off food and other necessities at a retrieval site but never had any contact with Flamini.
During that time, she was constantly monitored by scientists — including psychologists, researchers and cave experts — but didn’t talk “to anyone but myself,” Flamini told reporters shortly after climbing out of the cave.
In her brief remarks, Flamini called her experience “excellent, unbeatable,” before excusing herself to take a much-needed shower.
“I haven’t touched water for a year-and-a-half,” she said. “I’ll see you in a little while. Is that OK with you?”
According to the Spanish state news agency Efe, Flamini had to temporarily halt her experiment for eight days because of a technical problem. She spent that time in a tent while the problem was being fixed, but still had no contact with anyone.
Flamini, described by Spanish media as an “elite athlete,” went through 60 books and some 1,000 liters of water, according to her team.
At a press conference later on Friday, Flamini said she didn’t know anything about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as she felt she was still living in the day she went down, in late November 2021.
About eight months before that, a group of 15 volunteers emerged from a dark cave in southwestern France after spending 40 days in isolation as part of a project designed to help scientists better understand how people can adapt to extreme changes in living conditions and the environment.