Fiji Sun

Teen spends six years digging undergroun­d home after fight with parents

What started off as a petulant act of retaliatio­n soon escalated into a years-long obsession.

-

When he was just 14 years old, Andres Canto got into a minor argument with his parents, like many teenagers before him, with an altercatio­n sparked after they told him he wasn’t allowed to walk into the local village wearing a tracksuit.

Infuriated by this demand, young Andres stayed at home instead and vented his frustratio­n by whacking the ground in the family’s back garden using his grandfathe­r’s pickaxe.

What started off as a petulant act of retaliatio­n however soon escalated into a years-long obsession.

By 2021, six years after he first struck the ground, Andres had managed to create his very own undergroun­d cave, complete with a living room area and bedroom. The hideaway can be accessed by steps carved into the earth, and Andres, who now works as an actor, has plans to enhance it further going forward.

Although Andres admits he has no clue what initially sparked the idea of putting all his frustratio­n into the excavation, he soon began working on it by hand several days a week, finding that it helped him relax in the evenings after school.

The project stepped up a few gears when his friend Andreu brought round a pneumatic drill, and the pair spent up to 14 hours a week digging almost 10 feet into the earth in his parents’ garden in the town of La Romana, Spain. The layout of his retreat was often determined by the obstacles that got in the way of the project. He said: “Sometimes I came across a big stone and it could be frustratin­g after hours of digging that I had done almost nothing.”

The soil was originally removed by hand using buckets, but as Andres went deeper and deeper, he began to study excavation techniques and later developed a pulley system to take rubble to the surface.

As he began to create rooms, he reinforced the ceilings using

arched entrances and vaulted ceilings with reinforced columns to prevent a potential collapse. He estimates the project has cost him a grand total of £43 (FJ$ 121.94).

 ?? ?? Andres Canto did all the work by hand.
Andres Canto did all the work by hand.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Fiji