Our 2010 trip to Maui didn’t start well. Our reservation for a small- or medium-sized car could not be accommodated; they were all gone. The only thing available was a four-door Mercury Marquis GS, a very large automobile. Nevertheless, my significant other, Nadine, and I drove it around the island for a week or so and got used to it.
We were cruising along the northern coast on the Ka’anapali Parkway one day when I looked closely at the mountain we were nearing. The side facing us was a sheer cliff that looked like it had been sliced with a knife. But what caught my eye was a road that had been cut into the face of the cliff, running from the very bottom to the top at a straight, 45-degree angle. It looked like only a half-mile or so to the top, and I thought the view of the ocean and overall area from up there just might be worth the effort.
So, at the next turnoff, I wheeled over and made it to the base of the mountain, where a small sign said no rental vehicles were allowed up the road, which was not maintained. I ignored the sign and kept going up that narrow dirt road, noting that our car’s width covered about 90 percent of the road and, interestingly, there were no guardrails. Meeting another car on this path could be a bit dicey, but I figured few people probably ever went here.
The view got better as we went higher, but I was nervous about the lack of guardrails with a 1,500-foot drop-off just a foot or two away. Finally we made it to the top where there was a small parking area, and after taking a few pictures, we decided to head back.
The downward slant of the road was quite extreme and our heavy car began picking up speed, so I dropped it into low gear to help keep it slow. Nadine said the view from her side of the car was almost straight down, and cautioned me to be very, very careful — just in time to see another car coming straight toward us.
We both stopped, virtually nose to nose, each wondering what to do next. We couldn’t get around each other because the road was not wide enough and there were no guardrails to keep us from going over the edge. The biggest question was, do I put our huge buggy into reverse and back up to the top of the hill? The mere thought of looking over my shoulder, trying to keep the car from going over the cliff or banging against the stone wall, was rather scary. I knew the other driver was thinking the same thing, except he would be backing downhill, potentially picking up speed in the process. Both options were bad, so we just sat there, each wondering what the other would do.
I noticed that his car was considerably smaller than ours and that we were stalled right where there was a slight cut-out in the cliff wall that widened the road a couple feet, probably just for such an event. I pointed it out to the other driver and he nodded, so we each backed up a couple feet and he pulled his car right up against the rock wall, allowing a little more room between us. A smaller car would have easily moved through this space, but our oversized tank engulfed the road. We were so close to the edge, the weight of our car could have crumbled the dirt lip and slid us off into space. To counter this, I inched so close to the other car that I doubt we could have slid a piece of paper between us.
We slowly inched along and finally we were clear of each other. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and sat there for a few seconds while my heart slowed down, thinking how my ignoring that sign at the bottom could have killed us.
Since then, the whole Mercury line of cars has been dropped and it was almost a pleasure to see them go — especially that Marquis! Our subsequent trips to Maui stayed on the straight and narrow — mostly in small cars.
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