Buenos Aires or El Calafate?

Neither city is a place to swim. Buenos Aires has the brown, silty Rio de la Plata, where people sunbathe on the grassy Costanera promenades and the Atlantic resorts such as Mar del Plata are a long journey south. El Calafate has Lago Argentino, which is glacier-fed, icy and usually swept by wind. In both, a hotel pool is the realistic answer, and in Buenos Aires the summer heat makes one far more welcome.

Buenos Aires eats far better. Beyond the beef of its neighbourhood parrillas there is a strong Italian layer of pizza, fresh pasta and ice cream, plus empanadas and choripán from street stalls. You also get grand coffee houses such as Café Tortoni and the more ambitious kitchens and wine bars of Palermo.

El Calafate shares the love of the grill but trades beef for Patagonian lamb roasted on iron crosses, with lake trout and king crab alongside. Its restaurants mostly feed tour groups coming back from the glacier, so the meal people remember is often a lunch out at an estancia.

Buenos Aires is a city to explore on foot for its own sake. Avenida de Mayo runs from the Casa Rosada past the Palacio Barolo, Recoleta Cemetery is a maze of marble mausoleums, San Telmo keeps its old streets, and the Bellas Artes and MALBA are two serious art museums.

Where Buenos Aires shows off its old wealth in stone, El Calafate is a modern service town for the national park, with little old building to look at. The Glaciarium is worth a visit before you see the ice, and the regional museum and the rock paintings at the Walichu caves fill an afternoon, but that is the whole list.

The gap could hardly be wider. In Buenos Aires dinner starts at ten, Palermo's hidden cocktail bars fill around midnight and the clubs open around two and run into daylight. The tango milongas keep locals dancing in neighbourhood halls until the small hours.

In El Calafate a night out means a craft beer or a glass of Malbec in a pub on the main avenue, with a small casino if you are still restless. With a glacier bus leaving early, most people are in bed soon after dinner.

This is the reason El Calafate exists. Perito Moreno's 70-metre ice wall, crampon treks across its surface, cruises to the Upsala and Spegazzini glaciers and the dry steppe below the Andes are scenery on a different scale. On the edge of town there are flamingos at Laguna Nimez.

Buenos Aires is flat pampas and river. The Bosques de Palermo and the Costanera Sur wetland are good for jogging and birdwatching, and the Paraná Delta beyond Tigre makes a pleasant day by launch or kayak. For real hiking country, though, you have to fly to Patagonia.

Buenos Aires has far more within a day's reach. A fast ferry crosses to the cobbled old town of Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay, a train runs to Tigre and the delta, and San Antonio de Areco, Luján and La Plata offer gaucho crafts, a huge basilica and a planned provincial capital.

From El Calafate the outings are trips into landscape rather than to other places. Sheep estancias, some reached by boat across the lake, are the exception. El Chalten is about three hours away and works better as a stay of its own.

Buenos Aires is the stronger choice with children, mainly because there is far more to fill the days. The Palermo parks have lakes, pedal boats, playgrounds and the planetarium. The Museo de los Niños in Abasto and the hands-on science exhibits cover a wet afternoon, and the Temaikèn biopark and the amusement park at Tigre are each about an hour out. Children are welcome everywhere, though the long distances, broken pavements and late dinners take some managing.

El Calafate has much less for families, but it is small, safe and calm. The walkways at Perito Moreno are well built, and the crack of falling ice holds even young children's attention. Laguna Nimez and an estancia with horses and sheep can fill another day. Long drives, raw wind and age limits on glacier treks mean a short stay works best.

Once you have one rechargeable card, the whole of Buenos Aires opens up: the Subte, the oldest metro in the Southern Hemisphere, colectivo buses running day and night, and taxis on every avenue. The distances between neighbourhoods are long, though, and La Boca lies off the metro.

El Calafate is a single walkable avenue, but everything you came for is more than an hour away and the town has no buses of its own worth the name. You will be booking tours or scheduled buses, or hiring a car and driving gravel roads in strong wind.

Buenos Aires is a proper shopping city. There is leather around Villa Crespo, independent designers in Palermo Soho and expensive boutiques on Avenida Alvear. Galerías Pacífico has its painted domes, and the Sunday antiques fair runs along Calle Defensa in San Telmo.

El Calafate's main avenue sells outdoor gear, sheepskin, knitwear and calafate berry jam. It is good for a fleece you forgot and a few gifts to take home.

Buenos Aires is easier on a budget. Public transport costs little, parrillas and pizzerias serve generous plates and wine is cheap, though Palermo, Recoleta and Puerto Madero charge much like Europe and the exchange rate can swing sharply from one trip to the next.

El Calafate is one of Argentina's pricier stops. Summer rooms are priced for a short season, and the real cost is the excursions: park entry, glacier treks, lake cruises and the transport to reach them. Hostels and simple parrillas help, but seeing the ice is never cheap.

Buenos Aires has a stage life worth building a trip around. There is opera, ballet and symphony at the Teatro Colón, plays and musicals along Avenida Corrientes and a large independent theatre scene. Tango ranges from polished dinner shows to neighbourhood milongas with live orchestras. In El Calafate the most you can expect is a guitarist or folk singer at a restaurant or estancia dinner.

Neither city is built for unwinding, and what differs is the kind of rest each allows. Buenos Aires has day spas in Palermo and Recoleta and the slow pleasure of cafés where nobody rushes you, or a sobremesa that stretches through the afternoon. All of that sits inside a loud city that stays up late.

El Calafate offers quiet instead, with saunas and pools at a few lodges looking out over the lake and wide skies. The early starts and long bus rides of each day's excursion keep it from feeling like a retreat.