Anguilla or Turks and Caicos?

On sand and water there is almost nothing between them. Both have powdery white beaches and sea warm enough to swim in all year. The difference is in how the beaches are laid out. Anguilla is one small island with more than thirty beaches, all a short drive apart, from the long strand of Shoal Bay East to the resort crescents of Meads, Rendezvous and Maundays Bays on the west end. With no cruise pier, even the famous beaches stay quiet. In winter it is best to stick to the south and west, because swell can reach the north shore.

Turks and Caicos centres its beach life on Grace Bay, where an offshore reef keeps the water calm and where most visitors stay, so it is the busier of the two. Its variety comes from spreading out: the glassy shallows of Taylor Bay and Sapodilla Bay, empty cays reached by boat, and near-deserted shores on Grand Turk and Salt Cay.

Anguilla is clearly the better place to eat. Dinner is the main event of the evening there, with polished beachfront restaurants along the west end and at Sandy Ground, and roadside lolos grilling ribs and chicken at weekends. Turks and Caicos has its own signature dish in conch, served fried, in fritters or as a raw salad with lime, and a fish fry near Blue Hills is worth an evening. Most meals, though, are international resort cooking along Grace Bay.

Neither has markets or much street food, and you will have tried most of either local menu within a week. The gap lies in how many good dinners you can have, not in variety.

Neither is a place for sightseeing, but Turks and Caicos has a little more to see, almost all of it on Grand Turk, a short flight from Providenciales. Cockburn Town keeps Bermudian-style houses along Front Street, the National Museum holds remains of the Molasses Reef wreck, and Salt Cay preserves its old salt-raking landscape almost untouched.

Anguilla's history fits into a morning or two: Wallblake House in The Valley, the Heritage Collection Museum in East End, and the Amerindian carvings in Fountain Cavern.

Anguilla has the livelier evenings, though only by island standards. The beach bars at Sandy Ground stay open late at weekends with dancing on the sand, Sunday afternoon sessions run on into the night, and the March reggae festival and August carnival fill the island.

In Turks and Caicos the evening means sunset drinks at the beach bars and resort lounges of Grace Bay, sometimes with a band, and it is over well before the small hours. Neither has a proper club.

Turks and Caicos is the stronger choice for time outdoors, and nearly all of it is spent on or under the water. The barrier reef off the Caicos Islands gives fine snorkelling, and the wall off Grand Turk and Salt Cay draws serious divers. Humpback whales pass Salt Cay from about January to April, and Chalk Sound is made for kayaking. Kiteboarding at Long Bay, bonefishing on the flats, flamingos on North Caicos and the Conch Bar Caves on Middle Caicos fill out the list.

Anguilla offers good snorkelling off Little Bay and the cays, reef and wreck diving in its marine parks, and easy sailing in the trade winds, with its wooden racing sloops to watch. On land it has cliff walks and birds around the salt ponds, and little else.

Neither offers much beyond its own beaches, but the outings are different in kind. From Anguilla the main trip goes abroad: a ferry of about twenty minutes to Saint Martin, with French Marigot and the restaurant street of Grand Case on one side and duty-free Philipsburg on the other. A chartered boat to Gustavia on St Barths makes an occasional treat.

In Turks and Caicos the trips stay within the islands. You can take the ferry and drive to the sleepy settlements of North and Middle Caicos, or fly by small plane to Grand Turk and Salt Cay for the old capital and the salt landscape. Those flights need planning, whereas Anguilla's ferry makes an easy half-day.

Turks and Caicos is the easier choice for families. Grace Bay shelves gently and is usually calm, and Taylor Bay and Sapodilla Bay have lagoon shallows suited to toddlers. Older children can snorkel among fish and turtles straight from the shore at Smith's Reef or Bight Reef, and several large Grace Bay resorts run kids' clubs.

Anguilla is just as safe, and its west-end beaches shelve gently too, but fewer resorts are built around children and older ones may run out of things to do within days. Neither has a zoo, aquarium or attraction to break up the beach days.

Once you have arrived, Anguilla is the simpler of the two to get around. It is a single island about 26km long, so a hire car puts every beach a short drive away on quiet roads. Getting there takes more planning, since most visitors fly into Sint Maarten and cross by ferry.

In Turks and Caicos the central stretch of Grace Bay is walkable, but the south-side bays and Chalk Sound need a taxi or a car. Going further means a ferry, a drive across the causeway or a small plane between islands. Both drive on the left, and neither has useful buses.

Neither is a shopping destination, but Turks and Caicos has slightly more to browse. Its open-air plazas along Grace Bay sell duty-free watches, jewellery and island art, and the woven palm-straw baskets and hats from North and Middle Caicos make the most distinctive things to bring home.

Anguilla has a few galleries, resort boutiques and souvenirs of sea salt, hot sauce and rum. Keen shoppers simply take the ferry to the duty-free streets of Saint Martin.

Both are very expensive. Upmarket resorts and villas dominate the accommodation, almost everything is imported, and winter is the dearest season in each.

The ways to soften the cost differ slightly. Anguilla has a few simple guesthouses and the cheaper roadside lolos. In Turks and Caicos it pays to share a self-catering villa with a group and eat at conch shacks, though boat trips, diving and flights between islands add up quickly.

Anguilla has more live music, though it still happens mostly at beach bars: reggae, soca and string bands at weekends around Sandy Ground, the long-standing reggae festival in March, and calypso and soca through the Summer Festival in August.

Turks and Caicos has the more unusual sound in ripsaw music, played on a carpenter's saw scraped with a screwdriver. You hear it mainly at fish fries and resort evenings, and the Maskanoo parade at Christmas is the one big occasion. Neither has a theatre or a concert hall.

For rest the two are evenly matched. Neither has a bathing tradition, spas belong to the resorts, and the quiet does most of the work. Anguilla's appeal is a single calm island free of high-rises and cruise crowds, with resort spas whose treatment rooms open onto the sea breeze.

Turks and Caicos adds the private-island resorts on the cays north of Providenciales, where yoga, treatments and healthy food are the reason for the stay, and its outer islands are slower still. What you get there depends more on where you book.