The summers are wet and winters dry; the days are cold and nights freezing.
There are no roads, no plumbing and no sewage disposal system.
Houses are made of corrugated tin sheets with no insulation.
The miners extract by hand gold using mercurythe second most abundant substance to be found here, after gold.
Unlike other mining towns, La Rinconada is not company-owned.
On the contrary, nearly all mines operating here are informal, or in other words, illegal.
There is no administration and no laws.
Nothing ever goes into the towns development.
Stranger still, the mining company, Corporacion Ananea, doesnt pay salaries to its workers.
Instead, they operate under an archaic labor system calledcachorreo.
Despite the company utilizing such a non-traditional system of payment, miners continue to flock to the region.
Between 2001 and 2009, the population of La Rinconada more than doubled.
Photo credit:Lucas Oleniuk / Toronto Star
Women scavenge for gold in wind and rain.
Photo credit:VQR
Source:Sometimes Interesting/Wikipedia/New Yorker/CNN/Washington Post
