Time to yourself is good, but this is a LOT of time: A 50-year-old woman in Spain just spent 500 days living alone in a cave 230 feet underground.
Her name is Beatriz Flamini. It was an experiment to study our internal clock and how we react to extreme isolation. Scientists watched her the whole time, but she had no contact with anyone. She had two GoPros so they could see her.
She went in on November 20th, 2021. To put that in perspective, the pandemic was still raging . . . the war in Ukraine hadn't started yet . . . and Queen Elizabeth was alive.
She was 48 when she started, and celebrated two birthdays in there. But she didn't actually know it was her birthday. She didn't have clocks or calendars, and she stopped trying to keep track around Day 65.
She says she was shocked when they came in to get her on Friday, because she didn't think she'd been there that long. She would have guessed around 170 days, and she was kind of sad it was over.
She told them not to contact her even if there was a death in the family. She had a panic button, but says she never felt the urge to push it.
She did have to come out for eight days once when a router had to be fixed. But she stayed in a tent alone, never talked to anyone, and those eight days didn't count toward the 500.
They sent food down to her, and she sent her waste back up. But she never showered the whole time.
She didn't have TV and couldn't read the news. So she's still being filled in on everything that's happened in the last 17 months.
So how did she pass the time? She says she did a lot of drawing, knitting, exercising, and read about 60 books. She also planned to write a book but says she didn't have time to finish it. (???)
She basically didn't talk the entire time, so conversations are tough right now. But the first thing she asked when she climbed out was who wanted to buy her a beer.
Her team says she broke the world record for longest time spent in a cave, but it hasn't been confirmed by Guinness yet.