Costa Rica, 1981: I had hooked up with Pat and we flew into Golfito from San José. We were picked up in this boat that was basically a 35-foot dugout, shaped out of a log. We were motoring our way to Pavones and there’s like five or six of us in the boat with all the supplies and stuff. Pat’s got a baseball cap on, fully dressed, smoking a cigarette.
We’re probably about a mile and a half out from Pavones and, out of the blue, Curren just flies out of the boat fully dressed. And we’re going, “What the fuck?” All of a sudden, he comes up along the side of the boat, his hat’s floating off, and he’s still got the cigarette in his mouth, but it’s totally soaked. And he’s got a 200-pound turtle.
He lifts the turtle up and throws it into the boat. And he goes, “That’s a small one.” We get to the beach, Pat’s soaking, but they have this turtle. Before he’s even dry, they dress it out and make up a series of turtle steaks. It fed everybody for a couple days.
