Peru's La Rinconada is the highest permanent settlement in the world: It has no running water, no sewage system, no garbage disposal

La Rinconada is not a hidden gem. It is a cautionary tale of a temporary camp turned permanent without water, sanitation, or safety nets, ruled by gold prices.

We all have that one friend who wants to travel everywhere. Machu Picchu? Booked. The Amazon? Packed. A random town in Peru that is closer to the sky than to sea level? They would say, “That sounds amazing.” Only, it is not. Or at least, not in the way Instagram makes 'amazing' look.

Welcome to La Rinconada, Peru — known as the highest permanent settlement on Earth, a place where the air is thin, the toilets basically don’t exist, but around 50,000 people live there anyway; reportedly for gold.

What NASA saw

In a 2019 article, NASA’s Science Mission called La Rinconada 'the highest settlement in the world' and published a natural-colour image taken on August 1, 2019, by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8. NASA placed the town in the eastern Andes Mountains, about 5,000 metres — roughly 3 miles or 4.8 km — above sea level, in southeastern Peru, around 650 kilometres (400 miles or 643.7 km) from the Bolivian border. It sits on the side of Mount Ananea and below a glacier called La Bella Durmiente, meaning 'Sleeping Beauty', per NASA.

It also reported that the town started as a temporary mining settlement more than four decades ago, which is why no permanent city services were installed. Male miners were reportedly allowed to spend up to 30 days at a time in the mine to collect as much gold as they could. They received no wage while in the mine, but there were also no restrictions on how much gold they could haul out. That system helps explain why a place never meant to be a city became one.

Why the population exploded

Despite poor working and living conditions, NASA reported that the population boomed in the 2000s as the market price of gold rose. From 2000 to 2009, the population of La Rinconada reportedly increased by 230 percent, and electricity was finally installed in the 2000s. Residents, NASA said, either burn or bury their trash outside city limits.

That is not a metaphor for a rough-around-the-edges destination. That is the infrastructure reality of a settlement built for extraction, not for habitation. The thin air is not just uncomfortable, either. NASA noted that each breath draws in half as much oxygen as at sea level.

That oxygen-poor environment can lead to chronic mountain sickness, or CMS, with symptoms including dizziness, headaches, ringing ears, palpitations, and even heart failure and death, NASA added. Researchers estimate one in four people in La Rinconada suffer from CMS. It is also why researchers travel there — not as tourists, but to study the short-term and long-term effects of oxygen-poor conditions on humans.

The other version you’ll see online

Peru remains a major draw for travellers, famous for natural and archaeological wonders, including the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu, which attract hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. But not every high-altitude curiosity is a destination.

In a 2025 report, TripSided put La Rinconada at 5,100 meters above sea level — slightly higher than NASA’s roughly 5,000-meter figure — and described it in far starker terms. The report said that what was once a small mountain village had become a 'violent, dystopian nightmare' with more than 50,000 residents after a gold rush in the early 2000s.

TripSided also said the town was a 'borderline lawless community overflowing with garbage', and warned that visitors stick out and can become targets. It added that there was no tourism industry there. Those characterisations reflect TripSided’s reporting, and they should be read as one outlet’s account rather than settled fact. However, both NASA and TripSided agree on the core warning: La Rinconada is not built for visitors.