A teenager in Spain was so upset after a fight with his parents that he decided to dig an underground cave in their garden, spending six years creating his own underground oasis.
Andres Canto was 14 years old when he fought with his parents when they told him he couldn’t go out in tracksuits, prompting him to grab an ax and head to La Romana, Alicante, to release his aggravation.
Six years later, Canto has created his ultimate haven, a human cave, complete with his own living room and bedroom.
Now that he’s 20, Canto doesn’t really understand what prompted him to start making the cave in 2015 but is pleased with the results.
Canto, an actor, said: “My parents want me to change clothes when I go to the village, but I want to wear the sports clothes I usually wear at home so I can play in the village.”
“They told me I couldn’t go out dressed like this and I said: ‘Don’t worry, I can take care of myself,’ and I went into the backyard garden and started digging a hole.”
But the hole kept getting bigger when Canto came home from school and in his spare time he continued to keep digging the soil.
His friend Andreu then brought in a pneumatic drill, which speeded up the process – with them eventually creating a 3m. deep cave, which took 14 hours a week to dig.
Now Canto plans to expand it – which already has mod-con features such as a heating system, WiFi belonging to its mobile phone transmission from the entrance, and a music system.
He said temperatures remained constant at 20 or 21°C between May and September.
Canto continued: “It’s amazing, I have everything I need. Working here can be tiring as the conditions are humid and there is not much air flowing, but I keep motivating myself to keep digging every day.”
He wasn’t too worried about flooding or even occasional visits from insects, spiders, and slugs, especially when he was ‘destroying their home’.
“I let them build their house in a new place on the wall. No problem,” said Canto.
He explained that he ‘always liked to build small huts’, as he lived in the countryside, and then started making tree houses.
“I was a kid with a lot of imagination,” he said.
Canto estimates that the project will cost no more than Rp 867 thousand because most of the construction materials were much cheaper than he expected.
He dug by hand using a bucket to carry soil from the hole, but eventually decided to learn another digging technique to help him – that’s when he came up with the idea of using a pulley system.
Canto also strengthened the roof of the cave by using arched entrances and vaulted ceilings reinforced with columns, as well as concrete walls to prevent collapse.
He went viral after posting a video of the cave online, and the video also immediately caught the attention of local authorities.
The Civil Protection and Environmental Protection Department visited him to make sure the cave was legal, with Canto saying: “Because I was the first person in Spain to do something like this when Civil Protection officers arrived there were no specific reports of it. It’s not a dungeon, nor is it a warehouse, it’s just a well-built underground hut.”
Amazingly, the parents are fine with their son’s underground oasis, with Canto saying: “[My mom] came down and told me it was smaller than it looks in the video.”
Actualización de vídeo tour 😉 pic.twitter.com/WunheXkwUt
— Kokomo (@andresiko_16) May 23, 2021
Here is another video posted on YouTube:
