My Body Started Shutting Down at 16,700 Feet (60% Less Oxygen)

⛰️ My Body Started Shutting Down at 16,700 Feet (48 Hours Inside) | I spent 48 hours in La Rinconada, the highest city in the world at 5,100 meters. Altitude sickness, hypoxia, gold mining, mercury poisoning and the brutal reality of the most dangerous city few have ever heard of. What happens to your body at high altitude when there is only half the oxygen you were designed to breathe? La Rinconada happens. This extreme altitude settlement in Peru near the Bolivia border is the highest settlement on Earth, a gold mining town with no hospital, no sewage, no law, and no way out except a single unpaved road through the Andes. In this survival documentary, I document what happens at 16000 feet over 48 hours as my body started shutting down. Within the first hour, altitude sickness set in. Headache, rapid heartbeat, nausea, insomnia. By hour twelve, hypoxia had reduced my oxygen saturation to dangerous levels. By hour thirty-six, early signs of HAPE and HACE forced me to confront the real possibility that staying any longer could be fatal. I entered an active gold mining Peru operation where miners work under the cachorreo system, laboring thirty days without pay for a single day of ore. Inside the tunnels, mercury poisoning is a constant threat. No ventilation. No safety standards. No regulation. The thin air outside is brutal enough. The air inside the mines is something else entirely. The high altitude effects on the body are relentless at this elevation. Your blood thickens. Your brain slows. Your lungs struggle to inflate. I tracked my oxygen saturation with a pulse oximeter and watched it drop to seventy-eight percent. At sea level, anything below ninety is a medical emergency. Here, it is Tuesday. Living at 5000 meters reshapes every aspect of daily life. Women called pallaqueras sift through toxic mine tailings for fragments of gold. Children grow up in thin air with no access to proper healthcare. A kilogram of potatoes costs more here than in Lima. Coca leaves are not cultural tradition alone, they are survival tools that suppress hunger and fatigue in one of the most extreme places on Earth. This is not a travel vlog. This is a document of what illegal gold mining, extreme altitude, and poverty do to the human body and the human spirit in one of the most dangerous places on the planet. If you have ever wondered what it feels like when your body tells you it was never meant to be somewhere, this is that place. 16700 feet. 48 hours. The highest and hardest place I have ever been. 💬 HAVE QUESTIONS? Want to know more about La Rinconada, body at high altitude reactions, or the reality of Peru mining towns? Drop your questions in the comments. I personally respond to everyone. Have you ever experienced severe altitude sickness? Share your story below. 👍 If this La Rinconada documentary opened your eyes to a world most people never see, please give it a thumbs up. Subscribe and hit the notification bell for more content from the most extreme places on Earth dropping every week. #LaRinconada #HighestCityInTheWorld #Rinconada