Inside the Philippines’ Most Dangerous Gold Mine

Inside the Philippines’ Most Dangerous Gold Mine

this is Diwalwal at first sight it might look like any other mining town but right under our feet here there’s a lot of people that work every day looking for gold in 1983 a gold vein was discovered here on Mount Diwata within months over 100,000 people flooded into the mountains miners traders fortune seekers it became one of the biggest gold rushes in Philippine history makeshift houses and tunnels appeared almost overnight by the late 1980s Diwalwal was producing tons of gold mostly extracted by hand using rudimentary tools and toxic chemicals like mercury but with no real government oversight violence quickly followed disputes between miners turned deadly rebel groups taxed the trade the military moved in the wallow became known as much for its chaos as for its gold by the 2000’s it was infamous a gold mine on the edge of law and life where profit often came at the cost of blood I have heard there have been so many landslides here that the mountain has just swallowed people whole and that uh the mines are so deep that some people don’t even know how deep they are hello ah nice to meet you how long have you worked in the mine is it very different now than before how did it change so now a lot lot more have a lot of people left Diwalwal Mercury is used to separate gold from ore but after that it lingers in the soil in the rivers in people’s blood impacting the entire ecosystem are people aware of that it’s dangerous but they still use it do you work in the mine too 15 wow if they’re very young do they already go all the way down in the mines or some of these children are as young as
14 yet they work long hours in the local mines to support their families I tried speaking with a few of them but most of them were too camera shy to share their story a lot of the surrounding mountains all have gold in the mountains here but this particular town is very infamous because it is one of the few places where there’s no official legal mines all the most of the mines that are here are all like people that just started it themselves you can see that here like all these small houses where the sound is coming from they’re just people that are digging in the floor hey nice to meet you do you have a extra light only one light thank you OK great ha ha ha yeah yeah wait yeah I’ll sit down do you ever have to put oxygen in here how how long do you work here 24 hours hey hello stop okay how long have you worked here 1990 wow how many how many hours per day do you work in the mine do you ever have accidents that happen inside the mine so that there’s like shaking inside the mine does it ever happen that people die here in the mine you have to carry this all the way like this out of the mine! oh no ha ha and you have a heart here too ha ha are you not afraid of getting sick from using with mercury how much money do you make here if you work like every month depends Diwalwal has no shortage of graves collapsed tunnels poisoned lungs shootings here every gram of gold comes at a cost did you um ever overtime see any accident happen here do you know any people who died here do you know of anyone who ever got sick from working in the mine it’s the same as always that when I travel somewhere that people say oh you have to be careful because people are uh sometimes a bit dangerous there but people are very kind here really everyone is just helping and saying hi and being very kind 1 2 3 this is the city center of Diwalwal and now it looks kind of peaceful but one day it was very different here in the late 1980s the lure of gold turned this now quiet mountain into a chaotic frontier thousands of unregulated miners stake claims fought over territory and work dangerous tunnels by hand rival gangs clashed regularly banditry was rampant and even children as young as 14 toiled in the mud it wasn’t until the mid 1990s when the government deployed troops and introduced formal permits that the violence finally subsided a little a little bit further I found one mine manager who was advocating for more sustainability he agreed to meet me and even made a small presentation for me you don’t know where it goes what incident where does most of the money go to then according to this division it says can you go back to the previous slide it says they even employ child labor? thank you very much we’re now going to visit the mine they work for which is close by here yeah hello how does the mining affect the Agusan Marsh the road towards the mine is not paved yet so it’s very shaky because of all the mining this area has become a landslide prone area so definitely this season because it’s rainy season now so we have to be very careful what are what is this exactly so this is all the output from the mine but here is the mine itself wow there’s people that work all the way down there but right now there’s no one in there because they’re doing a ritual with this chicken that’s laying here because they believe that the chicken spirit will give a good fortune to the miners do they also use mercury here to serve what is the most dangerous thing about working in the mine for you every week did you ever uh heard about here or in the other mines that there were deadly accidents from people how many hours a day do you work here you work 24 hours in a day that’s a long time haha what does a miner make on a daily basis do you notice any any effect on your health from working in the mines for a long time that’s how they pump in the air so it goes through this? how long does it take before a mine like this doesn’t produce or you don’t find any gold anymore so this is a pretty recent mine when the Americans came here in the 30s they also were out for gold and they uh created a mine here which is now closed of course but you can still see some of the concrete structures here and also here in front of the house that they used to like uh put their uh Mills on to drill all the sand out and they made a lot of tunnels like this here and this is one of the ones that uh remains it’s been partly closed but it’s still quite deep here’s a mine that uh last year caved in there’s not much left of it anymore and now you’re trying to make a new one there this tunnel is still in use now? they built their whole house around this hole here and here is the actual mine that goes in the mountain here it’s just a small very deep hole just very dark oh wow is this tunnel currently in use to find gold when do you think you start working in this tunnel again alright that’s gonna be very quick does your whole family work here in the mines what do you do as safety precautions? do you feel like it’s a hard life working in the mines thank you thank you thank you nice to meet you this is the portal? 200 meters down wow no no I’m just going to see wow it’s just an endless hole that goes all the way down this is 200 meters down we just have the Eiffel Tower here in front of us where does the gold go after it is found here what is that? so here they throw everything off the mountain and then it goes in the truck there like if if something like this is just built isn’t it like quite common for people to die here and in going all the way deep in the tunnel because it’s their mine of course after the collection is complete this is one of the last steps before the gold is shipped to companies all the gold ore that is collected in these bags here does then come and end up here on this processing plant here so they work here for free not so they get a small percentage? what do you make a selection of gold is inside how much money does she make in one day she gets the whole price after digging for a long day she can finally find a little bit of gold here and you can just see the small specks of a gold colour grains of sands in there this is 2 milligram so this would give her how much money 850 gold leaves diwalwal in sacks and ends up in jewelry stores in banks and maybe even around your neck but the people here barely get a piece to make life a little bit more entertaining after their shift the miners try to win some extra money playing pool they invited me to come and play with them how much money I’m definitely going to lose maybe I still even miss yeah thank you thank you thank you bye bye no say it thank Diwalwal is a testament to human resilience and cost for the miners it’s a lifeline that still demands grit and sacrifice for the land a legacy of deforestation and polluted streams regulations and replanting efforts have made cracks in the chaos but for many here the future still hinges on whatever gold the mountain yields and the environment will keep paying the cost OK we’re going inside the mine with a mine cart this is very Indiana Jones there’s just no one here anymore I don’t know, man welcome to my Australia this is 200 meters down we just have the Eiffel Tower here in front of us deep in the mountains of Mindanao lies a place built on gold and ghosts they call it Diwalwal once a gold rush town now a battleground of survival silence and slow death since 1998 very, yes now a gram of gold can cost up to 4000 before it would only be 1000 or 600 compared to year 2000 more people more living here until now Mercury very used in the mining yeah because every month they conduct a seminar about mercury they’re still aware but they’re still using it for it is the substance to obtain the gold they don’t have any choice yeah I worked but uh way back when I am studying in college that’s my sidejob how old were you when you started working in the mine 21 25 now there’s a lot of young people that work in the mine too? yes 15 years old 17 yeah there’s no limit in the in their age there’s not a single Filipino town that is complete without a karaoke machine welcome to my Australia do you wanna ride the minecart is that possible? yeah OK we’re going inside the mine with a mine cart this is very Indiana Jones come I’ll go? I have to already put my head down here because it’s very low and the water level is very high here look here many people have died in this mine before it’s leaking it’s leaking here there’s some people working all the way there hello there’s another cart that blocks away here we’re now so deep in the mine that you can’t hear anything anymore don’t know what that means 24 hours oh yeah the whole day? yeah I can also see a lot of big spiders hanging above me so I don’t dare to put my head up too much I don’t think that many tourists have been here before aha the track is loose here I hope he doesn’t leave me here because God I don’t know where to go then right now it’s rainy season so it’s extra dangerous because there can be floodings and the tunnels can fill with water all of a sudden and if it starts raining we all have to immediately go out because the water level is already high now and if the mudslide happens it might as well seal up the tunnel there’s a pipe that goes in all along I think that’s for oxygen guys vlogger! come on! wow and it still keeps on going he went a little bit further to help the guy with the cart but now I’m a this whole cart is all stacked with gold ore but now he left me here and they went all the way there but there’s just no one here anymore just I don’t know man now they’re coming back from that point on it goes vertically deep for a few hundred meters so we cannot go further with the cart so we’re turning back here hello sir come to the Philippines they said come to the beaches come to Palawan no no go to the mines all the water is leaking on me I’m going through a waterfall here in 3 2 1 okay thank you 1990 until 5pm too many landslides yeah, too many no I don’t know that I don’t stay in there too long it’s just my part time job depends like 1,000 in a day and here they’re taking all the ore off the truck and putting it inside here because here is the process that happens where they try to separate the gold from the ore this is where they leave the ores and then they’re going to put them in these things and put Mercury in there so that the ore and the gold is separated but the people that work here they have to work with Mercury and so that from here on also gets into the water of the village yes. sometimes people lose their limbs other times they lose their lives yes but further away from here yes back problems, lung problems another one! the philippines is very beautiful time for the cinema my presentation is entitled Bulahan og Bulawan this simply means uh blessed with natural resources just like gold 2008 during our strategic planning Agusan del Sur is the third largest province in the entire Philippines uh out of 77 province so the more the we are blessed the more we are becoming corrupt I don’t know what’s the reason behind our municipality is blessed with natural resources economically progressive but revenue generation very poor one of our speakers told us that we are a recipient Agusan del Sur is a recipient of a multi million peso special project funded by foreign institutions but ironically mining is the first livelihood here before logging on year 2000 cease and desist order issued by the provincial government of the time because of an incident poisoning yeah landslides they only get the money and invest it somewhere else *murmurs about child labor* but now some if you cannot if you’re not monitor there is still there is still Pero this is one I hope it is not there anymore the rich people due to mining their smallest ambitions is to have this in the summer thank you! that’s my short presentation Ma’am turn it off please we’re just first invited to some food with all the miners goat intestine juice I don’t eat the meat but I just have the soup interesting taste it has an impact but it’s very small this domain belongs to the indigenous people covering 22,000 hectares the first phase of extracting gold the one that they extracted from the mines like they refined it no the mercury is only used at that stage? sometimes the timbers will collapse but in our tunnel we have an inspection team they’re going down there to only to check the timbers yeah other mines here 24 hours yeah because I uh I’m the one who manages it here it depends because there are Destino Destino is we we pay it ah from their output based on meters we pay 15,000 per meter uh sometimes they get sick uh just like fever because in down there sometimes uh lack of air yeah sometimes a day sometimes a week sometimes a month a new mine this went all the way down? it caved in all of this here, caved in this is part of the original tunnel because this is sinking down and then drifting there we’re trying to rehabilitate it and try to renew the timbers not for now one month from now yes, we all do put on external protection like helmets it’s very hard but we still earn money from it thank you 200 meters I will not I will not advise you to go goes to our processing plant we process it just like that one gold ore this will be placed into the drums after the drums the fine one will be put into the carbon embalm processing through chemical process the gold that they produce will be sold in Tagum City because there’s a big company there that buys gold like the Grand Cop company do you also ride down on this cart? don’t misquote me they don’t tell anything if something happens down there they always say “oh it’s safe, nobody dies here” something like that at the same time I’m also doing parkour here after the gold gets extracted here it gets melted in here in this oven traditional mining they ask to work for free they will give to the community not for working but they are asking for not to throw but they get the pyrites where the 4,000 and how much money does she get from that that’s it the 4,000 yes 2 milligram 2 milligram how much money say how much historically

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In this video, I travel to Mount Diwalwal in Mindanao, Philippines, a legendary gold rush site known as the country’s “gold capital.” I went deep inside the dangerous tunnels with local miners, seeing how they search for gold in extreme conditions.
Discover what life is really like in Diwalwal’s mining camps, the risks miners face every day, and why this remote mountain has drawn treasure hunters for decades.
If you’ve searched for Diwalwal mines, gold mining in Mindanao, dangerous jobs in the Philippines, or life inside gold mines, this is for you.

Travel Date: June 2025

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Travel gear:
-GRAYL filter drinking bottle https://alnk.to/bEk7dlD
-Dji Pocket 3
-Dji action
-Iphone 16

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00:00 – Gold mine;
01:41 – Dangerous work;
04:12 – Inside the mine;
08:26 – Mercury poisoning;
09:39 – Friendly locals;
10:07 – History;
10:39 – Child labour;
13:26 – Collapsed mine;
18:24 – Gold process;
21:26 – Entertainment in the mining village;

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Hi, I’m Jonathan Le Blanc. I’m a full-time traveler who wants to show the human side of traveling and give another perspective on how the mass media portrays certain locations to us.

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💟Edited by: @Ajjouche on IG

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