Frank van Dam had survived an ice hole in -52°C Siberia and a week in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Nothing prepared him for what he says he witnessed within hours of arriving in La Rinconada.

The 22-year-old Dutch filmmaker traveled to the remote Peruvian gold-mining town for a documentary about life at extreme altitude. What he says he found instead was a level of danger that made him question whether he’d make it out unscathed.

A City Built on Gold — and Fear

La Rinconada sits more than three miles above sea level in the Andes, making it, by wide consensus, the highest permanent settlement on Earth. Roughly 50,000 people live there with no paved roads, no sewage system, and no running water. The entire economy revolves around informal gold mining beneath the mountains.

Law enforcement has little real presence. Van Dam was warned the danger was serious enough that he paid four police officers $400 to escort him deeper into the city.

“Almost every miner carries a gun,” he explained in his documentary, “3 Days in the World’s Highest City Without Laws!” According to van Dam, signs around mining territory warn that residents are permitted to shoot intruders, a claim he attributes to what he was told locally rather than to any official law he could verify.

It didn’t take long, he says, for that warning to feel real.

“There’s One Person Dead”

Within hours of checking in, van Dam says his guide, Jefferson, alerted him that a robbery was unfolding just outside their hotel. According to van Dam’s account, Jefferson told him one person was dead and another was being taken to the hospital, pointing to a body lying in the street.

“They don’t know exactly what happened,” the guide reportedly said, “because nobody wants to talk about the problems.”

Van Dam says the moment hit hardest because he’d been filming a TikTok clip with a local resident just minutes earlier. “Two minutes ago, we were having fun with locals, and at that time a fatal incident occurred,” he said. “This whole situation made me feel physically sick.”

Note: No police report, court record, or independent local news outlet has confirmed this specific incident. Peruvian regional outlets have, however, documented a broader and ongoing pattern of fatal shootings tied to disputes in La Rinconada in recent years, lending outside context to the danger van Dam describes — even though this particular event remains unverified beyond his own account.

A Chilling Rule for Survival

According to van Dam, his guide offered him blunt advice for what to do if he ever witnessed gun violence alone in the city: say nothing, see nothing. “If you see somebody shooting somebody, it’s better to say, ‘I can see,’ and stay silent,” Jefferson reportedly told him.

The Air Itself Was a Threat

Violence wasn’t the only danger. At 16,700 feet, oxygen levels are roughly half what they are at sea level. Van Dam said his lips turned blue and his throat felt dry enough to taste blood — both consistent with symptoms of oxygen deprivation at extreme altitude. He said his blood oxygen saturation dropped to between 70 and 75% while he slept, a level that, if sustained, can strain vital organs.

Despite the risks, van Dam says he and his crew pushed forward to finish filming. “This was one of the most risky recordings I’ve ever done abroad,” he said. “In this city, danger can appear in the smallest corner.”

What We Know

La Rinconada, Peru, is widely regarded as the highest permanent city on Earth at roughly 5,100 meters (16,700 feet).
The town lacks paved roads, running water, and sewage systems, and its economy is built on informal gold mining.
Fatal shootings tied to mining disputes have been independently documented in La Rinconada in past years by Peruvian news outlets.
Extreme-travel filmmaker Frank van Dam visited the city for roughly 72 hours in March 2026 and hired armed police escorts.
Van Dam says he witnessed the aftermath of a fatal shooting near his hotel and that his guide warned him to stay silent if he ever saw violence alone.
Van Dam reported severe altitude symptoms, including blood oxygen saturation of 70–75% overnight.
No independent confirmation of the specific shooting incident he describes has been located.

Why This Matters

Extreme-travel content has exploded on social media, drawing millions of viewers into places most people will never see — and rarely could survive. La Rinconada’s documented history of violence, paired with the near-total absence of law enforcement, reflects a broader reality: in some of the world’s most remote resource economies, the rule of law simply doesn’t reach. That gap between spectacle and safety is exactly what makes stories like this resonate — and exactly why claims from a single, unverified vantage point deserve scrutiny even when they’re compelling.

For van Dam, the moment crystallized something he says he’ll carry with him. “The same thing could have happened to me,” he said, “if I had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”