The view of Auckland and its surrounding islands was indeed ravishing—though, in retrospect, it was no more ravishing than any of the countless other views I would wind up getting ravished by over the next ten days. That, famously, is the whole point of New Zealand: if you don’t like getting ravished by views, you have no business in the place. To travel there is to give implicit consent to being hustled left, right and center into states of aesthetic rapture.
