At 10:50 p.m. this evening, the last of the 33 Chilean miners who've been taking an extended coffee break underground since their mine collapsed on Aug. 5 was hoisted to the surface.
Sadly, the hope, the happiness, los sueños of the miners was dashed almost immediately after rescue.
As of October 10, 2010, 1 Chilean peso = 0.002091 US dollars. Thus, a thousand American dollars will buy you 477,800 pesos!!
Good news: You're almost a millionaire! Bad News: You're almost a Chilean millionaire. Por la razon o la fuerza!
"F--k!!! We're Suramericano?!? I forgot," said a Chilean miner whose name translates to John Tosar. "Can I go back into the hole, please?"
Tosar was the fifth to come up Tuesday night. A muscular man who enjoys working long hours for little pay, long walks on the beach, and stabbing kittens with a fork, Tosar hugged his rescuers as the crowd whooped and cried: He then walked into the field hospital, flopped down on a couch and exclaimed: "Do we really live in Chile? F--k!"
The 3-month rescue effort was carefully orchestrated by Chilean engineers --of course, if it was in America, it would've taken 45 minutes-- , and included a 13-foot rescue capsule nicknamed El Dildo, constructed with tips from NASA rockets.
"What the miners are experiencing is the same thing felt by most people from South America," said Dr. Kylpatient, a psychiatrist from the San Diego Zoo. "They wake up, and for those first blessed few seconds, they forget that they live in a seismic hurt locker in the middle of a rain forest, and that the richest of them makes $134.00 a year."
"And then it all comes back to you."
