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The Huffington Post | By Sara Gates
Posted: 01/23/2013 1:33 pm EST | Updated: 01/24/2013 10:36 am EST




For Benito Hernandez, his ideal home was not a mansion or a high-rise condo, but something different entirely. Since he was 8 years old, the farmer knew exactly where he wanted to make his home -- under a rock in Coahuila, Mexico.

The 131-foot rock formation caught Hernandez's eye when he was just a boy working in the fields. Though it took him 20 years to legally own the land, Hernandez and his wife have turned the rock into a home, constructing a sun-dried brick house beneath the stone, the International Business Times and BBC report.

"I started coming here when I was 8 years old to visit the candelilla fields and I liked it here," Hernandez said. "I wasn't married and I didn't have a family yet, but I liked it and I had to keep coming to put my foot in because lands here are won through claiming them."

Located about 50 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border near San Jose de Piedras, the home may be small, but it was spacious enough for Hernandez and his wife to raise seven children. Though Hernandez installed a wood-burning stove, electricity is unreliable and the dwelling lacks a sewage system. Fortunately, the rock-formation-turned-home is near a mountain spring, which supplies a source of clean drinking water.

Hernandez makes a living by working off the land, planting and harvesting the candelilla plant, which boasts a variety of uses from candle wax to medicine. Though the family struggles to get by during the cold winter months, when their water supply freezes over, Hernandez refuses to move to a more comfortable abode.

"It gets very cold here and we struggle to get food," Hernandez said. "We have to work hard here on the candelilla fields. That's the only job we have. That's what we live from."

People living under rock formations or in caves in this day and age is not entirely unheard of. In October, a cave-dwelling man in El Paso, Texas, made waves after hikers reported that he jumped out of the cave in the nude and chased them away.

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photos below: Daniel Becerril / Reuters