This episode is brought to you by the Mazda CX50. Move and Be Moved. Hey there, Kelly McEvers here, co-host of the Atlas Obscura podcast. We are counting down to the holidays with 12 days of wonder, and now we're on day eight. By now you might be getting ready to travel for the holidays. I know there are a lot of people out there who might be going skiing during this time of year.

So today we're going to go to a ski resort ourselves.

But there is nothing normal about this particular resort.

It's in Bolivia.

It's abandoned.

And it's a place that is deeply beloved by its caretakers.

Producer Manolo Morales has the story.

These times, I remember that I had to say. This is Don Samuel Mendoza. He's 61 now, and he's telling me about one of his childhood memories.

Yeah, I'm going to 9 years, more or less

a little. My mother had a reveregris. I was going to nine years, more or less. I was a very young.

My abuela had a

revista,

my abuela me most

that revista.

I was nine years old

when my grandmother showed me a picture

in a magazine.

It was a picture of a man

skiing down a beautiful, snowy mountain.

Don Samuel grew up in El Alto, one of the biggest cities in Bolivia, and at age nine, he never

been to a mountain. So he was mesmerized by this image.

And as I was, I know how was this tallaya, I asked my grandmother,

...