Original subtitles

[Parker coughs]

There's nothing [bleep] left.

[Dan] I know, mate.

Then stop!

You are not looking good mate.

[Parker] Why?

Why doesn't it stop?

[vomiting]

[coughs, spits]

[dog barking]

[bleep] dog.

[Parker speaking]

[Dan] He has not able to talk.

[Parker speaking]

[Dan speaking]

So, we're gonna get the drip into you.

Diego's gonna sort that out.

[Parker speaking]

This is severe. We do have to be careful here.

[bleep]

[Diego speaking]

[Parker] Stop.

[Dan speaking]

[Dan] Wow. Look at this place, guys.

Is this one of the coolest places you've ever been in your life?

I wasn't expecting this.

It's a very place. You can, like, kind of feel it in the air, can't you?

Yeah. This is actually a love boat.

- [Tyler laughs] - [Dan] This is the love boat?

- [speaks gibberish] - [laughs]

Ew! Get off of me.

[laughs]

[Paul] In Peru,

Parker and his crew are waiting to find out

if they can get access,

to one of the hottest gold spots in the world.

[Parker] As of right now in the Yukon,

that's on the downhill slope.

If we can't find a way to find more ground,

our gold totals would drop

our revenue would drop and, you know,

I'm... I'm... I'm not okay with that.

So we need to find somewhere else

in Peru as a huge amount of mining going on.

I'm starting to feel like it's the time and the place,

for some money to be put down.

[Paul] Parker's search for virgin ground

began three weeks ago in the jungle of Quince Mil,

where he found encouraging gold.

From there he headed to the pristine

Amarakaeri Reserve.

Unable to find the right piece of ground,

he's now heading high into the Andes

to see if hard rock gold

could be the key to his future.

[in Spanish]

El Presidente.

[Diego speaking Spanish]

They're talking about Rinconada,

which is really where we want to go.

It's like the highest permits summit in the world.

At, like,

17,000 feet.

- Wow. - [Parker] Yeah.

Total mining town.

They've, like, made this mountain into Swiss cheese.

Visible gold in the rock.

- [bleep] - Yeah.

[Paul] Watched over by the mountain spirit Apu,

La Rinconada's Mount Ananea,

was first mined by the Incas

over 500 years ago.

Abundant with gold,

legends tell of a nugget discovery

the size of a horse's head,

weighing in at a staggering 94 lb.

In the last two decades,

rising gold prices have seen La Rinconada's population increase

twelve-fold, to 60,000.

But at 17,000 feet above sea level,

with only a basic infrastructure

and dangerous crime rates,

it's one of the most extreme mining locations on Earth.

[Parker] I told Diego, "I really wanna check that out."

But we need access.

[Diego] Yeah, okay.

[Parker] I heard you say, "Rinconada."

[Diego] Yes. It's possible.

- Cool. - [Diego] El Presidente,

he's the president

of mining co-operative in La Rinconada.

He told me that we should meet with him

to ask for permission.

And then he'll give us the low-down on getting in.

- Yeah. Yeah. - That's good,

[Diego] Rinconada is hard rock mining, right?

- [Parker] Yeah. - [Diego] Would you ever hard rock mining or...

[Parker] It piques my interest.

I would definitely consider it but...

it has to be financially viable.

[Diego] It's kind of a sketchy place.

So we're gonna need this guy's help.

But I hope we have a really good opportunity

of getting there and see some

mining and how they operate.

- [Parker] Sweet. - Mmm-hmm.

[Diego] Well, we have a plan.

- Are we ready? - [Dan] It's what it's about eh?

[Tyler] I know. I'm pretty excited.

I feel like this could be one of the most nuts places

we've ever visited.

I feel like I'm gonna really enjoy this.

Let's do it.

[Paul] The crew will leave Puno

and head 100 miles to Putina,

a gateway town to the Andes

and the infamous La Rinconada.

[Diego speaking]

[Tyler] It's gonna be really important

we have a good relationship with him, eh?

[Diego speaking]

[Tyler] Yeah, okay.

[Paul] There are three mining co-operatives in La Rinconada.

The only way Parker and the team

will be able to explore one of the mines,

is with the permission

of the mine president,

Edwin Ajahuana Mayta.

[president speaking Spanish]

[Diego speaking Spanish]

[Edwin speaking Spanish]

[in Spanish]

[Diego laughs] He knows you from TV.

[Edwin speaking Spanish]

[Parker] Thanks, for taking the time to meet us.

I'm sure you're very busy.

[Edwin speaking Spanish]

[Diego speaking Spanish]

[Edwin speaking Spanish]

So, he's telling you that, it's... It's dangerous.

[Edwin speaking Spanish]

[Diego] 'Cause it's really high.

17,000 feet.

[in Spanish]

[Diego] And the crime.

[in Spanish]

[Diego] So, he's telling us there's a reason

why they call La Rinconada,

"the land of tough men."

- [Tyler] I bet. - [Diego] Mmm-hmm.

[in Spanish]

[Diego speaking Spanish]

[Parker] Yeah, we wanna go.

[in Spanish]

[Diego] It's possible. We can make it happen.

Perfecto.

[in Spanish]

[Parker speaking Spanish]

[Tyler] We're very appreciative.

[in Spanish]

[Diego speaking Spanish]

[in Spanish]

Will he be out there tomorrow?

I'd love for him to be out there.

What are the chances of seeing any actual... Any gold tomorrow?

[Edwin speaking Spanish]

- [Diego] He brought some gold. - [Tyler] Ooh.

- Oh with him now? - [Diego] Yeah. He has.

[in Spanish]

[Dan] Oh, wow. [laughs]

Rinconada gold.

[Parker] Muchas gracias.

For the invitation out to the mine site.

And for, you know, opening up his operation to us.

[in Spanish]

Muchas gracias.

[Diego speaking Spanish]

[Tyler] Muchas gracias.

[Dan] We are about to embark upon the most intense part of our journey.

We need to keep a very, very calm head.

Look after each other, look out for one and other.

But highest human habitation on the planet.

And it's there for gold.

That's something that we...

We can't leave Peru without seeing.

[Parker] La Rinconada, the safety side of it is very real.

On the flipside, like...

It is an extremely rich gold area.

So...

I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Hopefully we all keep our,

fingers and toes.

Morning sun.

Whoo!

[Paul] On El Presidente's advice,

Diego has a police escort

to accompany the crew to La Rinconada.

[Parker speaking Spanish]

[in Spanish]

- I'm gonna ask him about some security... - [Parker] Yeah.

If there's anything we need to know in terms of being up there.

[police officer speaking Spanish]

[Diego] Well, he's telling me that we're going into,

a dangerous place.

he was telling me that, to be careful with cameras,

because someone there are not gonna be willing to get

recorded. Like, it's gonna...

Call too much attention.

[Parker] Gotcha. Um, Sheena,

- You're staying here. - Yeah.

- I think we... - And most of the crew is staying here?

[Sheena] We're sending one follow vehicle and that's it.

[Diego] Yeah, yeah. That's a good idea.

[in Spanish]

[in Spanish]

[Diego] There's a lot of...

assassinations.

[police officer speaking Spanish]

So, yeah, I mean...

Definitely gonna need them. For sure.

- [Parker] Right. - [Diego] While going up.

[Parker] And they're coming with us?

- [Diego] Yes. - [Parker] okay, good.

[Paul] La Rinconada's murder rate per capita

is one of the highest in the world.

The remote location

is nearly impossible to police.

Making it a virtually lawless town.

[in Spanish]

[Parker] We're just about to head into Rinconada.

The combination of almost 18,000 foot elevation

with, like, an extremely hostile population,

is really concerning.

This is definitely the roughest environment

that we''ve ever been in all our lives, really.

[Dan] Oh, [bleep] AK-47s are out.

Must be a pretty serious place if we need this many cops.

You can feel how we're getting higher and higher.

[Parker] Yeah.

You feel the pressure change in your head.

Yes. My ears.

Wow. Look at that.

Oh, my [bleep]

[Dan] This place looks like Mordor.

The landscape's so mad when you get really high like this.

[Tyler] How high is that, Diego?

Uh, like, 15,250 feet.

Oh, wow! It's getting a bit chilly.

[Parker] I've never been this high before.

It's hard to breathe.

The normal oxygen values change everyday.

Having altitude sickness can be dangerous.

[Parker] What's the earliest, most critical symptom

of something serious?

[Diego] Start with headache, blurry vision, confusion.

But if that happens, you have to go down fast.

[Parker] Gotcha. Okay.

I mean, look at this wasteland.

We must be getting near.

[Tyler] Is that Rinconada?

Yeah.

- [Parker] Wow. - [Tyler] Oh, my [bleep]

It's huge.

[Paul] Nicknamed, Devil's Paradise,

80,000 ounces of gold

is found here per year.

Worth $136,000,000.

But the price people pay,

is brutal.

Located almost as high as Everest Base Camp,

the harsh living conditions and oxygen thin air,

means the average life expectancy here,

is just 30 years old.

There's no sewage system or anything, is there?

[Diego] No.

[Tyler] Their homes are built on the waste part...

This is the [bleep] wild west right here.

[Paul] Like gold rush towns throughout history,

the rapid speed people flock here

means infrastructure and sanitation is make-shift.

And law enforcement, virtually impossible.

[Tyler] [bleep] We stick out like sore thumbs.

[Dan] Do you know, I never felt like I was being kinda,

looked at as much.

Yeah, I feel very looked at.

Something that El Presidente was telling me yesterday,

sometimes they pay to the mountain with people.

What?

[Diego] They... Think you're drinking

and then they put something in your drink, you fall asleep...

Are you kidding?

And that's they try to make like an offer, a gift, to the mountain.

So more gold up here.

There's still human sacrifice happening now?

Yeah. That's what he told me.

[bleep] me.

I think we can get down.

- Look out for each other, yeah? - [Tyler] Yeah.

[radio chatter]

[Diego] People already asking, "What are we doing here?

Why are we shooting them?"

There's, like, 60 people staring at us.

[Tyler] This is wild.

Yeah, I think we should meet El Presidente.

Where did he say to meet him?

He talk about a minute statue.

[Paul] Klondike gold miner Parker Schnabel and his team

are in La Rinconada.

A nearly lawless gold rush town.

[Dan] Doesn't feel the most welcoming place, does it?

[Paul] Risking it all

to find out if the gold rich mountain

could be a mining opportunity for Parker.

[Parker] Night shifters drinking.

You okay, Diego?

Yeah.

It's, like, super wild.

What do you think?

There's just so much going on.

Some people are friendly.

Some people look like they'd murder me within a [bleep] heartbeat.

I've never seen anything like this in my life.

Not many people have, Ty.

- He's right there. - Oh, yeah. Good spot. Yeah.

[speaking Spanish]

This is the main square.

[in Spanish]

The mining operations are under the glacier.

Gotcha. And how much gold is coming out of this area?

Like, is there a lot of gold being found down there?

[in Spanish]

Is that a lot?

That's quite a bit.

[narrator] Per month, the mines extract around 6,500 ounces of gold

worth $11 million.

[in Spanish]

[Parker] Oh, wow. That's really good.

Worldwide average is, like, two.

I'm ready to go.

[in Spanish]

There's a tradition here where they say that a woman should not get into the mine

because if they get into the mine, the gold disappears.

[Tyler] I'm bad luck.

Okay.

I think I should stay with you.

Okay, that'd be good.

We can wait outside.

[in Spanish]

[narrator] Parker and Danny head to the entrance of El Presidente's mineshaft.

Right. Following the Presidente.

[narrator] He is the boss of Rinconada y Lunar de Oro, a cooperative

financed by 150 partners,

who then divide up the profit.

You can see the holes in the side of the mountains.

They're entrances. Mining entrances.

I don't even know how they would have got there.

- It's pretty... - That's risky.

It's extremely dangerous.

[narrator] Three different co-ops mine the gold source.

Each company blasting their own tunnels

deep into the five million year old mountain,

creating a labyrinth of mineshafts,

the longest being one mile deep.

So when you're prospecting, you look for fault lines

and the best type of fault lines are ones that go like this

and that have cross faults where they meet.

Like, that's a cross fault right there.

X marks the spot. That's what they're following.

[speaking Spanish]

Oh, are we here?

[Parker] When you're trying to build a company,

the two main factors is, like, are people safe and have a safe workplace

and is the business making money

and hopefully, finding lots of gold.

How do I look?

Oh, yeah.

Fresh.

We're pretty good at assessing situations on the fly,

but for finding those kind of projects,

like, you can't do it remotely.

You can't do it on the internet.

You know, you have to go there.

You have to put your boots on the ground.

You have to put a pick and shovel in the ground.

You have to meet the people that are mining them.

Looking at this place, it's fairly crude.

It's definitely something out of another world.

I've only ever been in underground mines

that had really, really good ventilation and lighting and emergency systems.

Like, I'm not wearing steel toed boots.

There's no carbon monoxide alarm on me.

There's no respirator on me. You know.

If anything goes wrong underground here, you're dead.

And I'm guessing that's a common occurrence.

[narrator] In addition to the 35,000 miners who work here,

bandits often hide in the caves, looking for gold to steal,

and are known to murder miners who try to stop them.

[in Spanish]

Here we go, Parker.

Let's go in the belly of the beast.

All right. In we go.

It's so weird being in a cave at over 5,000 meters.

We find ourselves in the funniest places.

This is special, isn't it?

Hey, look. Parker.

We've got the coca leaves out.

For luck and also for giving thanks to the land,

before they drill, they put three leaves

inside the creases of the rock.

I'm going to put three leaves in the rock for good luck.

And there's a handful in my mouth.

Hey, bravo.

[in Spanish]

The idea is to detonate this one.

[narrator] To remove a five foot square area of gold rich ore,

a hand drill is used to create a network of 12 holes,

four feet into the rock.

Each hole is then filled with 150 grams of explosives ignited by a fuse.

Mining directly at the gold source,

the miners expect to find almost five ounces of gold worth nearly $7,500.

[Parker] And that's what they use to drill the holes?

[in Spanish]

So they're going to explain you how to operate the drill.

- [Parker] That's my throttle? - Yeah, yeah.

- You just turn this? - Open the throttle.

- This one. - Yeah.

Si.

All right.

So now, we're going to drill.

Well if it wasn't hard to breathe before...

[Dan] I know.

[Tyler] Diego, what is this weather?

I can't believe how quickly it started snowing.

What do you think those ladies are doing down there?

[Diego] I don't know.

Do you reckon we could go have a look and maybe talk to them?

Yeah, sure.

- Hola. - Hola.

[in Spanish]

[narrator] Banned from entering the mine due to ancient superstition,

women known as pallaqueras hunt for gold on the harsh mountainside

in temperatures as low as minus 40.

[in Spanish]

- They want to show how they work. - I'd love that, yeah.

- We can go up if they want. - Let's go.

Definitely.

[in Spanish]

[in English]

[Tyler] So they basically just work through the tailings.

[Diego] Uh-huh.

Do they work every day for the mine site or are they working for themselves?

[Diego] No, they're independent, yeah.

So that gold they get to keep.

[Diego] Yeah, they keep the gold.

- For their families. - Oh, of course.

[in Spanish]

Good eyes.

It's got the quartz vein.

That's what you're looking for.

[speaking Spanish]

Can I have a go?

Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Which one? This one?

There looks to be a lot of quartz, right?

[in Spanish]

She's tough.

[Tyler laughs] Not as tough as these ladies.

[in Spanish]

[Diego] Ah.

Ah, like that?

[laughs] She's like, give me back that hammer.

How much gold would they get out of a day's work?

They can get two grams of gold a day.

Oh my [bleep].

[Tyler] They're doing it for $100 a day between them.

It's a lot of hard work for not a lot of gold.

They don't have another way of making money.

This is their only option, isn't it?

Yeah. They may get, like, a little bit of gold out of it,

but they're sacrificing their health and their well-being.

To see them out in these harsh conditions

working, like, incredibly long days,

for not much gold at all is really hard for me to see.

I feel like where I'm from, the mining industry is evolving so much

and women are really taking a big part in it

and I feel a lot more comfortable in the mining industry

even than I did 10 years ago.

And then to come here, it seems like such a huge step back in time.

I'm in shock a little bit that this is what they do and this is their jobs.

They're pretty incredible women.

[speaking Spanish]

Gracias.

[Diego] Thank you. She says thank you for the flattery.

[in Spanish]

She hopes to see us again.

Yeah. Tell her thank you.

- Gracias. - Gracias.

It's the richest ground I've seen in a very long time.

But how we would fit into that in a way that would fit in with our morals

is something we'd have to discuss.

You did a good job, mate. I was well impressed.

[narrator] In 30 minutes, Parker has drilled 12 holes, ready to pack with explosives.

Oh, I can't [bleep] breathe.

I don't know how those guys do that

all day.

Yeah, I saw you breathing, really...

- Was this thing, like, moving in and out? - Yeah, yeah.

- Is the inside of it supposed to look like that? - [laughs]

[speaking Spanish]

Now we're going to load the holes.

- We're going to blow it up. - Yeah.

Sweet.

[in Spanish]

[bleep]

This is the explosives.

[Dan] Okay.

[Parker] And, like, they've wrapped it up in newspaper.

So this is just full of beads of ANFO.

Like, I've used ANFO before with my dad.

But I've never seen this.

How many?

[in Spanish]

Four.

Yeah, and when you push it has to be very carefully.

[in Spanish]

Yeah. Your first mistake is your last mistake.

Boom.

[Dan] Parker, how dangerous is this?

If we do it wrong, you'll never know.

[narrator] In the highest mine on Earth,

Parker and Danny load the walls

with 1.8 kilograms of explosives,

enough to obliterate a New York taxicab.

I've never set explosives off with a lighter before.

So we let the fuse off in here?

Yeah.

Oh my [bleep].

So we basically light the fuse and run out?

Yeah.

[in Spanish]

- Three minutes to get out of the front door? - Yeah.

So you don't run, but you walk fast.

- You walk fast? - Yeah.

This is so wild.

So I've taken it we've got one two, three, four, five, nine, 10, like 12 lighters then?

- And 12 guys all light at the same time? - No.

What happens when you like the first one

and that [bleep] goes off before you've lit the last one?

Probably all of us standing here would die.

[bleep] This is it, man.

- Okay. So bend it. - Yeah.

- You burn it. - Yeah.

- And give it to the master. - Okay.

So again. What are you going to do?

I'm going to bend this over, I'm going to light that

and then I'm going to hand it to him.

- Exactly. - Perfect.

Everything in my body is telling me not to stand here right now.

Everything. Everything's saying go.

Don't [bleep] this up, man.

- Are you ready, Dan? - I'm ready, man.

This seems so wrong with the lighter. [bleep]

[in Spanish]

Oh, it's burning.

You okay?

Everything all right?

Yeah, but it's burning back and he has [bleep].

[in Spanish]

Let's go.

Unless it goes off right now,

that might be the coolest thing we've ever done, Danny.

Let's get the [bleep] out of here.

But just like, I can't believe that, oh, man.

Like, so much potential to go wrong.

- Really. - Yeah.

[explosion]

That was not that long.

We literally just got here.

That does not feel like it's a very long way away.

[explosions]

[laughing]

[explosion]

Oh, [bleep].

There's more! I thought you said no mas.

[laughing]

[narrator] Once all 12 explosions detonate,

[explosion]

[bleep] felt that one.

the miners retrieve the blasted ore.

Oh, wow.

- I'm worried about the roof. - Careful.

Well, the roof is gone.

- Look how clean it broke. - Oh, wow.

It's just like a big, flat plate.

This is, like, the veins that they're looking for.

That's what they'll take and crush up and get gold out of.

There it is. Let's have a look.

One there and one there.

Very cool.

Awesome.

[narrator] The way miners are paid here is unique.

All gold mined in the first 15 meters goes to the cooperative.

All gold found in the following five meters goes to the miners.

This is then repeated along the tunnel,

making it a lucky dip who pockets the biggest finds.

And how do they load all these rocks onto the truck?

[in Spanish]

- All by hand. - All by hand.

- Holy [bleep]. - Yeah.

Wow.

So because you are new to this mine,

[man] You need to carry your ore.

[man 2 speaking indistinctly]

[all speaking indistinctly]

Oh, what a day!

That was sordid.

- So wild! - Better keep a low profile.

Just the absolute most [bleeping] nutty thing we've ever done.

[both chuckle]

[Parker] It's one of those things where, like,

if something goes wrong, you're never gonna know that something went wrong.

Like, you're done.

Shouldn't be smiling when I say that, but...

It's crazy to think that these mountains are just full of that, too.

Like, what we just did probably happens every...

half hour in here.

Not sure I could do it as a business,

but, like that was an experience like none other.

These might be the most hardcore people we've ever met.

Almost 17,000 feet, unventilated mine site, all by hand.

Yeah, I think the most hardcore people we've ever met.

[man 2] Yeah, I reckon.

Right. Let's see how they refine it down.

Muchas gracias guys. That means a lot.

And thank you for opening up, you know, what you guys do,

and showing us.

And you guys, I don't know if there's a good translation for this,

but you guys are the most hardcore [bleeps]

- I think I've ever met. - [laughing]

- [man 3] Yeah, there is. - Okay.

[speaking Spanish]

[bleeping]

Ah, gracias. [speaking Spanish]

[all speaking Spanish]

Gracias. Adios.

- Muchas gracias. Adios. - Gracias. Gracias.

I have the worst headache right now.

- [Dan] Really? - Yeah.

- It's not a normal headache. - Okay.

Really sharp.

[Dan] That's a full on altitude headache that. [Parker] Yeah, I think so.

[bleep] It's not joke.

[Dan] Let's go, let's go.

You all right?

I just have a really bad headache.

You feeling rough?

Yeah.

Okay.

[man 3 speaking]

[narrator] More than three miles above sea level,

the oxygen-thin air of La Rinconada is starting to affect Parker.

Should we go find Tyler and Diego,

and have a look at the crushing,

you're feeling well enough to do that?

[Parker] Yeah.

The boys were late, aren't they?

They were almost one hour late.

Yeah, I've sent Parker a message and I've sent Danny a message,

and I haven't heard back from them yet.

There's, there's cell service, they're just not getting back to me.

They should be here.

- I'm worried about them. - This is not a good place to be late.

No. What happens if we're on the roads after dark?

- It, it gets dangerous. - Okay.

How're you feeling? That was pretty, um...

That was hard going wasn't it?

Yeah, I don't feel good.

- Not feeling great? - Mm, not great.

That's no good.

You should tell the A guy.

- What? - You should tell him you're not feeling great.

Ah. There they are.

- Ola! - How'd it go?

[Dan] It was amazing! Really good, yeah.

- Parker. - Mm?

- You feeling okay? - Mm-hmm. Peachy.

They saved the lives of the medic.

- But I just kind of did. - [both chuckle]

[bleeps] place to die.

I'm not gonna die.

- I'm fine. Yeah! - You all right?

[Parker] Stop it.

[narrator] The gold laced rock ore Parker blasted

has been taken one mile back into town...

There it is.

...to a processing plant hidden away on a residential street.

[man] We're bringing a lot of attention right now.

[Dan] It's that word might have gone around that there's a film crew here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, right now there people watching at us, right now.

- If you look over your shoulder. So... - [Dan] Yeah, yeah.

In here?

[speaking Spanish]

[narrator] For Parker to assess

if mining here could ever be an option,

he wants to see how they extract the gold.

- Whoa! - [Tyler] What an operation!

I was not expecting to see this.

[Parker] Oh, wow.

[Diego] Parker!

They wanna show us the gold they have from

From yesterday? Oh.

Oh, look!

[man speaking Spanish]

- [Dan] There you go. - [man speaking Spanish]

[continues speaking Spanish]

12 hours is one, one of this.

[speaking Spanish]

And what do those weigh? Couple grams a piece?

[speaking Spanish]

[Diego] Five to seven grams apiece.

[Dan] There you go.

[Tyler] So, what kind of process do they do? How, how does it work?

[speaking Spanish]

[Dan] What a crazy place, that, Ty.

Wild! I wasn't expecting this when those gates opened.

- Are they just grinders, are they? - [Tyler] Yeah.

Crushing it all down.

[Dan] What!

[Parker] These are ball mills.

So it has those balls in there,

and the balls crush against each other and with the rock and turn it into, like,

basically dust.

[narrator] To release the gold from the ore,

the blasted rock is ground down in giant crushers

before being smashed into dust in the ball mill.

Mercury is then added binding itself to any gold.

[Parker] Can you see all the mercury in there?

Can you ask what happens to the material after they've processed it?

Like, where the tailings go, you know, once the gold's out?

[speaking Spanish]

I don't know how to... relaves is the word.

I don't know how to say it in English.

- Like a dump? - Kind of. Yeah.

Gotcha.

This is environmentally, like, horrific.

Oh, yeah.

[Tyler] In Western countries there's a lot of laws around

to make the waste have as least impact on the environment as possible.

And when you come to a place like this, that's not really happening.

[Diego] Yeah, I'm pretty sure this has a really important environmental impact.

Especially because the mercury doesn't stay here.

It goes underground, and...

- I can imagine it can travel like a long distance, right? - [Tyler] Yeah.

And the amount of mercury they use is huge.

[narrator] While Peru has regulations governing

the storage of tailings and other waste,

with so much gold to process,

La Rinconada uses 28 gallons of mercury per year,

releasing 200,000 times the safe limit into the environment.

Would you ever mine in La Rinconada?

[Parker] Oh, there's no way. There's absolutely no way.

There's really good gold in the ground, but it's very unsafe,

and it's very environmentally damaging.

[Diego] So, no. Gotcha.

[speaking Spanish]

[in English] Diego, what's happening?

Uh, he's asking us to go to another point where they process the mercury.

- Ah. - Oh, very cool. Nice.

Uh, I don't want you to panic.

I can't talk so much. I have no oxygen.

And I have a bit of a headache!

How long did you started feeling sick?

An hour ago.

[narrator] At 17,000 feet

the air here have 50 percent less oxygen than Parker is used to.

- Yeah. - [Dan] Are you gonna check his stats?

[Diego] Mm-hmm. We need to check your oxygen levels.

Parker exerted himself pretty hardcore in that mine up there.

And he's uh... He's got a splitting headache.

For us to be here his stats needs to be above 70.

[Parker] Is it measuring? [Dan] Yeah, you're at 65.

That ain't great.

That's bad.

[narrator] Oxygen saturation levels below 70, are deemed critical.

Blood cells are not carrying enough oxygen around the body,

which could be fatal.

We need to go. We need to go now.

Okay, let's go.

Bug out.

[speaking Spanish]

[narrator] In the highest town on earth,

Parker Schnabel's health has taken a frightening turn.

[Dan] Let's get out of here then.

[speaking English]

Makes you probably happy that you live where you do, yeah.

[Tyler] Oh, my [bleep]. I've never been more appreciative of my life, ever.

[Diego] And if you're already developing symptoms,

it's really important to identify them early

and go down in altitude fast.

[Dan] Well...

I was about to say we did it. We survived La Rinconada.

- We haven't got out yet. - [Tyler] Touch wood, Danny.

[Parker] I feel like I just smoked a cyanide dipped cigarette.

[Diego] Headache is like throbbing?

- Yeah. - [Diego] Blurry vision?

[Parker] Yeah.

Yeah, I don't feel good.

[narrator] With Parker presenting serious symptoms of altitude sickness,

Dr. Diego has made the call to evacuate La Rinconada.

He must get Parker down to a lower altitude

in the hope his body responds to the more oxygen-rich air.

[Diego] Are you feeling okay?

[Parker] It's still bad.

[bleep] raging headache.

My head is pounding.

I'm feeling emotionally and physically drained after today.

The altitude alone has knocked me. Um...

Yeah, you can just feel your body not getting enough oxygen.

And then to see what these people are going through is, gets really hard.

I don't think Parker's ever going to mine there.

But we ended up leaving Rinconada today with Parker feeling pretty sick.

So we got out of there. We had to come down in elevation.

Diego is pretty concerned.

And, if our doctor is concerned, you know it's not good.

Diego, what's happening, mate?

Where, where are you going now?

[in English]

[Diego speaking English]

[dog barking in the distance]

[Parker in English]

I still feel cold.

[Diego speaking English]

- Yeah. - Okay, go for it.

Yeah, but you're definitely playing a part and it's a good thing.

[Diego speaking]

[retching, coughing]

[Dan] It's all right, buddy.

There's nothing [bleeping] left.

- No, I know mate. - Stop.

You are not looking good, buddy.

Why?

Why is it still--

[retching, coughing]

- [dog continues barking] - [bleeping] dog.

[Parker speaking]

[Dan] He's not able to talk.

[Diego speaking English]

So we're gonna get the drip into you. Diego is gonna sort that out.

[Parker speaking]

Is this severe? Do we have to be careful here?

[bleep]

All right, buddy.

He usually has good veins.

He doesn't have good veins right now.

- He's dehydrated as [bleep]. - [Dan] Really?

[Diego speaking]

[Parker] Stop!

[Diego whispering]

[bleeps]

[Sheena whispers]

[Diego whispers]

[Sheena] Okay.

[whispers] No trip is worth getting that unwell for.

Really, genuinely.

I feel like we've pushed it a step too far here.

Be quite happy to end this trip tomorrow.

If you said that Parker's gonna be all right in the morning, so...

Everything else doesn't mean anything much right now.

[Diego] Parker's really, really sick.

And I'm worried about him.

Especially the last half an hour, he went...

His condition went really, really bad.

If he doesn't improve I'm making the call.

Trip is over.