Island whirl - The third-generation, all-new Miata, now called the MX-5, explores Hawaii's Big isand

摘要

What red-blooded American automotive journalists would admit in the pages of a car magazine that they drove to the beginning of one of the most spectacular roads in these United States, saw the 35-mph speed limit, and found it didn't bother them? Call me a girl, which only means I'll be brave enough to write that gentle motoring has a place in our hectic world, that it can even he alluring. Depending, of course, on the transport. And, of course, on the locale. We've come all the way to the Big Island of Hawaii ( 4038 square miles) to stare into the ocean's depths at dawn and ride at dusk to the top of Mauna Ken (13,796 feet), lifted up into a heaven packed with more stars than we've ever seen in our lives. In between, we'll fling the top back on the planet's most popular roadster and drive through a goodly number of the eleven microclimates on the island. By the time we get to that perfect road. High-15646412316 agapanthus, hibiscus, bird-of-pafadise, and towering lines of Norfolk pines throughout the restored Victorian-era villages of Hawi and Kapaau, near the birthplace of Kamehameha the Great, the warrior king who united the Hawaiian Islands in the 1790s. Seventy years ago, this town of clapboard churches and modest, pastel-hued homes was the hub of the sugarcane industry, which eventually went bust in 1975. Artists, hippies, and assorted haoles have blended with the local native Hawaiians to create a laid-back corner of paradise.