A man has spent 18 years digging a tunnel in the middle of the jungle – because God told him to.
Santiago Sanchez, 69, admits that he does not know where the tunnel will end up or why he was asked to build it, but he regards it as God’s work and devotes every waking hour to the project.
4 Santiago descends into the inky blackness of the tunnelCredit: CEN/Noticias4VisionTCS
4 Dedication… He was contacted by the Almighty 18 years agoCredit: CEN/UNIVISION
Every morning he heads into the tunnel in the city of Berlin, in the western El Salvador department of Usulutan, at around 3am.
And every time he emerges he is carrying around 90 pounds of rock, stones and debris from his epic undertaking.
During an interview with Univision journalist Ernesto Rivas, Sanchez explained: “What I am doing is a spiritual revelation from God.”
The journalist who went into the tunnel to have a look confessed that by the time he got halfway, he was struggling to breathe and had to leave quickly.
4 No one really knows how deep the sinister tunnel goes except its creatorCredit: CEN/UNIVISION
4 Journalist Ernesto Rivas went into the tunnel but soon struggled and leftCredit: CEN/UNIVISION
Santiago said: “Only I am allowed to go to the end, because I am God’s tunnel digger. Nobody else is allowed to go there.”
Despite his conviction that he is following God’s orders, he has many critics and many more who laugh at what he is doing.
His wife, named Isabel Ventura, admits that “there are people who say that he is crazy” but he answers that “no one knows what God is going to demand from you.”
Because nobody else other than Santiago has ever been to the end, he is the only one who knows how far it actually goes but after 18 years, it is believed to be some way.
Closer to home, a mysterious underground street complete with tiny homes and tunnels was discovered in North East England this week.