Three men in a boat

Arms and baggage are stowed, with the prescribed safety equipment, from life jackets to flares...

Another strategic decision: where to start the descent? By convention the Po is considered navigable from Pavia, and so it would be 400 kilometers. A bit too many to get our respective agendas in agreement, and so we scroll down the river map to a name, Polesine Parmense, that ignites the enthusiasm of the most sensitive to good food: "Here is the Cavallino Bianco!" the restaurant of the Spigaroli family, heir to an osteria frequented in the early twentieth century by those waiting for the ferry to the opposite bank. "This is the sanctum sanctorum of culatello!" and to all seems a very good reason, reasoning that we converge on this Po Valley location on the border between Parma and Piacenza. We still have 250 kilometers and five days of boating ahead of us.

A majestic black Parma pig boar, father of the best culatelli, in its pen overlooking the Po River.

The prologue concludes at the table, in front of an exciting tagliere and a bottle of sparkling Malvasia, because in these parts with salumi we drink mostly white and then finish with a nocino. Before heading to the port we pay due homage to the tutelary deity of all that charcuterie: Maciste, the mighty black Parma boar who frolics like a sultan with his harem in the shade of a poplar grove.