Above the clouds: the highest city in the world. Photo

La Rinconada tops the list of cities and towns located at an altitude of over 3000 meters above sea level

High in the Peruvian Andes there is the old camping for the extraction of gold, which over the years has grown to city status.

More than 30,000 people live here at the height of 5000 kilometers, but the settlement itself is the highest town in the world.

La Rinconada (elevation 5100 meters) is perched so high up that the weather conditions there resemble the West coast of Greenland, despite being located just 14 degrees from the equator. Summer in the city humid, while winters are dry, with chilly-cold. The average annual temperature in La Rinconada is only 1.2 °C.

High in the Peruvian Andes there is the old camping for the extraction of gold, which over the years has grown to city status. More than 30,000 people live here at the height of 5000 kilometers, but the settlement itself is the highest town in the world.

La Rinconada (elevation 5100 meters) is perched so high up that the weather conditions there resemble the West coast of Greenland, despite being located just 14 degrees from the equator. Summer in the city humid, while winters are dry, with chilly-cold. The average annual temperature in La Rinconada is only 1.2 °C.

In fact, La Rinconada is more reminiscent of a mining settlement than the city. There are no roads, no plumbing and no sewage system. Buildings made from tin sheets without any insulation. All the men work in the mines, while the women sell goods, engage in prostitution, or looking for gold among the rocks. Miners extract gold using mercury, the second substance that is produced here in abundance. Earth, air, water, and snow in La Rinconada heavily contaminated with toxic waste. Thus, it is not only the highest but also one of the darkest cities in the world. It can be included in the list of the most unusual cities in the world.

Unlike other mining towns, La Rinconada is not owned by any mining company. Almost all work here mine informal, or in other words, illegal. There is no administration and no laws. Nothing ever invests in the development of the city, the economy is not regulated, and most of the gold mined goes straight to the black market.

Mining company, Corporacion Ananea does not pay salaries to their workers. Instead, they operate under the archaic labour system “cachorro”. According to the rules, people will work for thirty days without pay, and on the thirty-first day they are allowed to take as much ore as you can carry weary shoulders. Reserves of gold in the local rocks has long been exhausted, but thousands of people still trying to catch the tail of luck and work in hellish conditions because of a single day. Then this gold is sold on the black market at a fraction of the price. Despite this non-traditional system of payment, miners continue to flock to the region. Since 2001, the population of La Rinconada has more than doubled.

Hundreds of women scavengers additionally searched new shipment of waste rock from a nearby gold mine in search of the grains of the precious metal.

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