Sunday midnight is probably not the best time to arrive in Christchurch – or anywhere else for that matter. My plaintive inquiries about where I might be able to get something to eat were greeted with a hollow laugh, and when I resorted to an almost inedible piece of pizza I was politely – but firmly – told that I could face a fine for attempting to consume it in a taxi.

It was an inauspicious start to the latest leg of my BBC World Service series, Blind Man Roams the Globe, and reminded me that I'd already broken one of my golden rules. I rarely take taxis, infinitely preferring public transport as a much better way of meeting and talking to people at random, which is the lifeblood of these programmes.

The idea is that, as a totally blind person, I explore the world's cities with the senses that I've got; what I can hear, touch, taste and smell.



Fortunately that includes the human voice and experience tells me that for some reason people don't seem to mind being cross questioned out of the blue by a blind man. So, public transport – rather than taxis: though that, too, was as rare as an edible pizza in the small hours of a Christchurch morning.



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Of course, when you're travelling, things always look better in the light of a new day and it turned out that the cottage I'd rented for my few days in the city was central, cosy and welcoming, – as was Karen, my temporary landlady.



It was then I discovered that almost every house in Christchurch has a story to tell about the earthquake in 2011, which has left its permanent mark on the city. The biggest impact, of course, was the 185 deaths and the many injuries it caused. But it also changed the physical face of Christchurch for ever.

Supplied Teri McElroy, who is also blind, helps Peter navigate around her home town.

The cottage on Chester Street East on that February day had just welcomed its latest band of backpackers when it was fatally damaged by the quake. The new tenants leapt into their camper van and raced off into the night, never to be seen again!

But it's symptomatic of the resilience of Christchurch people, Karen went on to explain, that this had given them the chance to rebuild using modern materials, taking the opportunity to maximise the restricted space they were left with to create a really pleasant, ergonomically sensible, living space.

She talked about the thousands of buildings that had been irrevocably damaged, but also the chance it has given the city to create new ones, such as the central library, and about the plans, admittedly only plans at the moment, for a new cathedral.

Supplied BBC broadcaster Peter White in Lyttelton, with the stiff wind blowing straight in from the Antarctic.

Not everyone I met was able to feel quite so sanguine about the changing face of the city. David and Joan have lived here for much of their married lives – indeed, David has known it since he was a boy. He described to me, movingly, his sense of being an alien in his own city, recognising the terrain but not the buildings around him – the sense of being a stranger.

Whenever I make these trips, one of the first things I do is look for a blind long-time resident against whom to test my own impressions.

Teri McElroy grew up with the sounds of Christchurch all around her, but over the past five years what was familiar has significantly changed.



She was in the centre of the city on the day of the earthquake. She says it wasn't so much the quake itself, as the aftermath, which has affected her so much.



She was driven home that day, unaware of the extent of the damage, human and physical, that had been done – only to find that her own house in the suburbs, while still standing, had suffered the fate of so many whose houses were built on swampy land: liquefaction, with the mud oozing all over her floors and prized possessions. The initial chaos could be quickly dealt with, but five years on her gate still sticks and the road she lives on is full of hummocks and pot holes.



For years she's felt unable to walk confidently around a city in which she used to feel at ease and free. And the sounds she enjoyed; the ripple of a favourite fountain, the song of the bell bird, the peace of a park, is now overlaid with the current signature sound of Christchurch – almost continuous drilling, hammering and the constant cacophony of cranes.

unknown Peter White outside a rebuilt Christchurch cottage.

All this building does herald some real improvements, though – a really positive development for Teri has been a solution to the problem of how to figure out where the bus she needs is going to stop.

It used to be a question of just listening until it approached – asking a passer-by where it was going and then trying to run to the appropriate stop. Not a very practical solution for a blind person. But in the new multi-million dollar bus interchange, which has replaced the old one damaged in the earthquake, a tactile walkway guides her to her bus. As she nears, she presses a braille indicated display to help find her driver.

It's a classic illustration of the advantages of starting from scratch and a real first for me to see in action.

Supplied Peter with the bull and piano sculpture, which goes by the full name of On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, by artist Michael Parekowhai.

As Terri and I tap our way around parts of the city she hasn't been back to since the earthquake, I get a real sense of melancholy from her, as if something gentle and peaceful has been lost forever.

In her front room, back at her home in the suburb of St Martins, are 20 birds; 17 canaries and three budgies. She's always loved birds and I begin to understand why she has invested so much in the care of these fragile friends: a kind of consolation from the natural world.

Not everyone feels like this.

Supplied Broadcaster Peter White with Margaret Sweet who helps look after the Ngaio Marsh House in Christchurch.

Local journalist Ric Stevens is keen to show me examples of how the city has tried to come to terms with what's happened to it.

There are several examples of public art which have sought to do this. I find myself groping my way along what initially feels to me like a man on a bicycle. It turns out that what I think are a set of handlebars are in fact meant to represent the horns of a bull, which appears to be towering over – of all things – a piano.

The significance is somewhat lost on me, but Ric says that for him it represents something powerful and irascible: the bull exerting its strength over something delicate and vulnerable – a symbol of powerless humanity, but still, somehow, surviving.

I'm not entirely convinced and neither is the gardener I meet, whose job is to tend the lawns outside the art gallery where the sculpture stands. When pressed on its meaning, he murmurs, perhaps aware of his disloyalty: "I wouldn't have it in my garden!"

More comprehensible to me are the 185 empty chairs of all shapes and sizes set out in a public square. They represent the earthquakes victims, most poignant of all to me: a baby's chair.

Not all the attempts to raise the city's spirits have been so serious. My favourite is a dance mat in the centre of the city where locals are invited to take along their own music and plug their iPods into something looking rather like a washing machine. On the very cold Wednesday lunchtime when I was there this wasn't doing very much trade, but Ric assured me that if I'd been there the previous Friday night, I would have heard quite a lot of action. I thought the least I could do was give it a go myself, although Ric proved to be rather shy.

It's all too easy for someone on a brief visit to become carried away by the immediacy of the earthquake, and to ignore the fact that Christchurch has a history going way back beyond February 2011.

For instance, I was here at the beginning of what felt to me like a very cold spring, reminding me that Christchurch sits facing the Antarctic, with very little to get in the way of those freezing winds. It was of course the jumping point for those classic Antarctic explorers, such as Captain Scott and the Norwegian, Amundsen.

I spent a happy afternoon in the Antarctic Centre, where a real attempt is made to help you feel exactly what it's like to pit yourself against that relentless climate.

I lurched and leaned my way in the Hagland vehicle – now regarded as the most effective way to cross the ice; subjected myself to the simulated roar of 40 kilometre per hour winds; and most enjoyably of all, attended feeding time at a kind of hospital for sick and damaged penguins.

They bite, apparently, even when you're being kind enough to feed them and a very engaging penguin keeper explained how she's been quizzed about her description of herself on her passport as a "penguin wormer".

There's no doubt that Christchurch faces some tricky problems as it tries to recover from the 2011 quake. Should it try to recreate the elegant traditionally English look of the city of the past, or go hell for leather to be the first, built from the ground up, 21st century city? My impression is that's a decision which still hasn't been taken and may well end up as an uneasy compromise. But, if Ric Steven's analysis of the sculpture outside the art gallery is correct, my money is on the piano to give the bull a good run for its money.

Listen to BBC World Service doco Blind Man Roams the Globe: Christchurch online at bbc.com/worldserviceradio