A seasoned traveler reveals the brutal reality of spending 24 hours in the world’s highest city, where human trafficking and daily deaths are rife.

A seasoned traveler has detailed the brutal reality of spending 24 hours in the world’s highest city in Peru, calling it his “scariest travel experience” ever, with widespread crime and pollution, not to mention the dizzying lack of oxygen and the frigid climate.

Ammar Kandil, co-founder of YouTube channel Yes Theory, reveals in a new upload how he traveled to the elevated city of La Rinconada in the Peruvian Andes.

Drone images show how the ramshackle settlement, which sits at about 16,700 feet, is nestled in the middle of snow-capped mountains, but mars its beauty with dozens of mining shafts in an area rich in gold.

In another clip, the short documentary shows how a road leading to the city is surrounded by extensive patches of garbage, since there are no landfills in the surrounding area and all the garbage is left visible.

As he travels along the road, Ammar reflects, “This has to be one of the saddest arrivals I’ve ever had somewhere.”

‘From beautiful views on the way up and then this sea of ​​rubbish everywhere.

‘I mean, that’s what happens when 50,000 people settle somewhere they shouldn’t, without the necessary infrastructure to be able to live there and with illegal mining activity everywhere. Dude, this breaks my heart.’

To make matters worse, Ammar discovers upon arriving in La Rinconada that there are only three hot showers in the entire town and that the water is heavily contaminated with mercury, which is used to extract gold.

It reveals that this pollution, which has seeped into surrounding lakes and streams, “causes serious health problems for miners and the wider community, including neurological and reproductive harm.”

In a phone call with one of his business partners, Amman offers his initial impression: ‘[La Rinconada] It is by far the crappiest place I have ever been to.

‘[There are] Fights broke out everywhere, people looked at us as we walked.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so worried about going to [a] filming.’

In a 2015 article by New YorkerWriter William Finnegan explains how La Rinconada operates primarily as an illegal mining town with no company to oversee things.

Detailing the labor outlook, he wrote: ‘The mines, whatever they are called, are small, numerous, unregulated and, as a rule, tremendously unsafe.

‘The majority do not pay salaries, much less benefits, but rather work with an old labor system called cachorreo.

“This system is often described as thirty days of unpaid work followed by a single frantic day in which workers take all the gold they can get their hands on.”

It also highlights how women are “excluded” from the mines due to a “long history of gender discrimination both in mining and in Peru, and a host of related superstitions about bad luck, women and the mines.”

Despite this, he notes that women still mine gold in the city, but they do so by scouring discarded rock for gold flakes.

In the documentary Yes Theory, Ammar meets one of these women known as ‘pallaqueras’ near one of the garbage patches.

Talking to her through a translator, he learns that she has been panning for gold for four years and typically works eight hours a day hunched over on her hands and knees.

However, it is very difficult to make a living and the small pieces of gold he had collected that day would only be worth between 10 and 20 cents.

Because mining generates so little income for the miners, Ammar says many turn to prostitution and around 2,500 women from neighboring communities come to La Rinconada each year.

After saying goodbye to the woman, the camera crew heads into La Rinconada.

Ammar describes the scene, stating: “The first impression for me It’s much bigger than I thought.

‘I mean, I knew about 50,000 people live here, but I guess I didn’t imagine what that would be like on the side of a mountain.

‘It’s okay, there are parts where people are temporary residents of the city, so they just come during the mining days or months and then leave.

“But they say it’s between 20,000 and 30,000 people and then there’s the main city, which is more permanent.”

After arriving in the town, Ammar meets a young miner named Fidel who speaks good English and is able to learn a little more about life in La Rinconada.

Fidel reveals that he ventured to the mountain town of Cusco to look for job opportunities.

He said the biggest thing he had to get used to was the high altitude, since at such altitude there is much less oxygen.

In another scene, Fidel shows Ammar the potential income they can make in the mines if they find gold.

Some local women show Ammar and Fidel a pair of sizable gold nuggets.

They explain that these deposits would be worth around $675.

However, Fidel explains that finding pieces of that size is unpredictable and could be ‘maybe in a day, in an hour, or in half an hour… it depends.’

In addition to mining being grueling work, the young man also reveals that death is a possibility as wells collapse and there are deaths daily.

As night falls, the Yes Theory crew ventures into the city, but they quickly return to their hotel after being scared by the rising tension outside.

In addition to hearing fights throughout the night, the YouTuber says the cold he experienced was unbearable, as was the lack of oxygen, resulting in constant bathroom breaks.

He explains: ‘Good morning, it’s half past five in the morning, I haven’t slept much. In fact, I don’t sleep at all.

‘I think I had about 45 minutes. I have one of the worst headaches I have ever had. [I] Feel dry everywhere. I counted that I peed eight times in nine hours, which is a lot. I wasn’t even drinking that much water.’

When the time comes to leave the town, Ammar resumes his trip to La Rinconada. He tells the viewers: ‘[It was just a] very intense experience that we live and that divides us between such extremes.

‘Like waking up at the bottom of a glacier and seeing the most beautiful view, but being awake during the night and hearing what was happening in the city and hearing gunshots and hearing people screaming and hearing drunk people breaking bottles.

“It’s a strange paradox between being in one of the most beautiful places you can find on our planet and at the same time seeing the worst that humans can do to our planet.”

Ammar leaves with a request for the Peruvian government to apply more regulations on mining in the area. And he concludes: “It’s really dangerous because There are tunnels that are inside the mountain below the glacier.

‘[There is] No one cares about the structural integrity of anything, so it almost seems like a ticking time bomb.

‘That the mine has been operating since the ’70s and hundreds of thousands of people have come to do this and it’s just layers upon layers upon layers. [with] no proper inspection.

“I pray that people are safe and that the government does something about it before it becomes catastrophic.”