Tanning mushrooms in Montevideo

How do you tan a mushroom, I asked while sipping yerba mate from a boiling calabash gourd at 4 in the morning.
I was sober and the question was a genuine one: I wanted to know what ‘curtidores de hongos’ meant, as the so-called ‘mushroom tanners’ had just become the highlight of my trip to South America.
“Uruguay? It’s just an easy way to put another stamp on your passport, a ferry ride from Buenos Aires” said a fellow backpacker uninspiringly. Maybe he was right. At first sight Montevideo felt like an– albeit very charming– ghost town: cats sleeping inside old bookstores’ windows, derelict fin de siècle buildings, graffiti on dirty scruffy walls. But as I ventured into the city centre, it all changed.
All of a sudden fruit stalls were bursting with the freshest produce, cars were honking, old shoe shine men were offering to clean my flip flops, people were rushing around, unfazed by the punchy street art. Had it just been this lively decadent ensemble, Montevideo would still have been one of my favourite places in Latin America, so much for just a stamp on my passport.
“We are going out to see a show, do you want to join us? It’s in a parking lot” said one of the three Argentinian women with whom I was sharing a dorm. I’m a big fan of the ‘why not’ approach to life, even when the offer is as enticing as hanging out in a parking lot.
It turned out the parking lot was the Carnival Museum’s, opposite the port of Montevideo. On a balmy January night twenty men of all ages and shapes, a couple of them holding cymbals and drums, were gathered in a semicircle, ready to start. They were ‘los curtidores de hongos’, a 100 years old group performing Murgas, the unique Uruguayan folk musical theatre genre that sells out during Carnival time. It’s not just some sort of cabaret songs sung by fun-loving Uruguayan men. It’s political and social satire, with lots of drums and brilliant recitativo.
It didn’t matter that it was just rehearsals and that there were none of the typical jester-like costumes. Along with my new friends and a bunch of amused Uruguayans, I got completely sucked into the contagious rhythm and laughed my socks off at the affectionate anti-Argentinian jokes. So infectious was the joy and thought-provoking the lyrics, we kept on chatting about politics, love and life until morning. And I never found out how mushrooms are tanned.
The longest in the world, Montevideo’s carnival offers 40 days of shows from rehearsals to fully-fledged parades.