The highest city on Earth, built entirely around gold
A gold-mining settlement perched at roughly 5,100 meters in the Peruvian Andes — higher than Everest Base Camp — where thousands live and work above the snow line with no sewage system and barely any paved road.
La Rinconada grew from a small mining camp into a city of tens of thousands within a few decades, drawn entirely by gold deposits beneath the Ananea glacier. Miners traditionally work under 'cachorreo' — unpaid labor in exchange for keeping whatever ore they can carry out on the final day of each month — an arrangement that has shaped the town's entire informal economy.