Cape Town or Rio de Janeiro?

Rio wins this one easily. Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon are a walk from the main hotels, the sea is warm enough to swim in most of the year, and the beach is where the city spends its day, with footvolley, vendors and families staying until sunset. Grumari and Prainha add emptier sand under forested hills, though the currents on the open ocean mean you should swim near the lifeguard posts.

Cape Town's Atlantic beaches at Clifton and Camps Bay may be even more beautiful, with granite boulders and the Twelve Apostles behind them. The water, though, is cold enough to make you gasp and get straight out. For real swimming you have to drive to the tidal pools at Muizenberg and St James on False Bay, and only in summer.

Cape Town is the stronger city for food, helped a great deal by its surroundings. It has Cape Malay curries and bobotie from the Bo-Kaap, inventive tasting menus around Bree Street and Woodstock, and line fish eaten by the harbour at Kalk Bay. Much of the wine comes from estates less than an hour away.

Rio eats more casually and more socially. Cold chopp and pastéis in a tiled boteco, Saturday feijoada, juice bars on every corner and rodízio grills are all real pleasures, but the range is narrower and fewer meals stay in the memory.

Rio has a little more to see, and more of it is spectacular. Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf come first, and the old centre rewards a day with the gilded São Bento monastery, the Theatro Municipal and the Real Gabinete Português de Leitura. Santa Teresa's mansions and the Selarón steps are nearby, and football fans will want Maracanã.

Cape Town's sightseeing is shorter and heavier, centred on colonial and apartheid history. You take the ferry to Robben Island and visit the District Six Museum and the Castle of Good Hope, with Zeitz MOCAA for contemporary African art. These sights move you more than they dazzle you, and they fill three or four days.

Rio is much the better place for a night out. On weekends crowds fill Lapa under the old aqueduct arches, buying caipirinhas from street stalls and dancing in clubs until dawn. In Botafogo the evening drifts from one pavement bar to the next, and in the weeks before Carnival the street blocos take over whole neighbourhoods.

Cape Town's evenings start with a sundowner at Camps Bay or on a rooftop, then move to the cocktail and wine bars of Bree and Kloof Streets. Long Street draws a rowdier crowd and De Waterkant is the gay quarter. It is friendly but spread out, and it goes quiet outside summer. In both cities, take a car between districts after dark.

Both cities sit right inside dramatic wild country, but Cape Town offers more variety. You can hike or ride the cableway up Table Mountain from the centre, and the national park runs down the peninsula to Cape Point. Add the fynbos, the penguins at Boulders, the seals off Hout Bay and the whales in False Bay, and you have wildlife Rio cannot match, along with surfing at Muizenberg and the drive along Chapman's Peak.

Rio's landscape is greener and steamier. The Tijuca forest has marmosets and waterfalls, Dois Irmãos and Pedra da Gávea make short, steep climbs, and hang-gliders fly down to land at São Conrado. Summer humidity means hiking is best done at dawn. In Cape Town the usual problem is the south-easter wind closing the cableway.

Cape Town has the better surroundings for day trips, mostly thanks to the Winelands. Stellenbosch's oak-lined streets, Franschhoek's mountain valley and the estates around Paarl can fill several days without repeating yourself. Hermanus is further out, for watching whales from the clifftops. You will need a car or a tour for nearly all of it.

From Rio, the easy outings are the old imperial summer town of Petrópolis and the short ferry to Niterói for the Niemeyer museum. The best places in the region, Paraty, Búzios and Ilha Grande, are three hours or more away and work better as overnight stays.

Cape Town gives children a little more to do. There is the Two Oceans Aquarium, the penguins at Boulders, the cableway ride, the treetop walkway at Kirstenbosch and False Bay's warm tidal pools for small swimmers, and many wine estates have play areas. The catch is that almost all of it needs a car.

Rio is very warm towards children, and a family trip there is built around the beach. The calmer water at Leme and Praia Vermelha suits young swimmers, and the Sugarloaf cable car, AquaRio and the BioParque fill the rest of the time. The heat, traffic and uneven pavements make it more tiring for parents.

Rio is easier to manage without a car. Its metro runs along exactly the route visitors use, from the centre through Botafogo to Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon, and the flat seafront promenade is pleasant to walk. Santa Teresa, Tijuca and the western beaches still mean a taxi.

In Cape Town, only a small area is walkable: the City Bowl, the Bo-Kaap and the Waterfront, and only by day. The MyCiTi buses go only so far. Seeing the peninsula and the Winelands means a driving trip on the left. That is a pleasure on the coast roads, but you have to plan around it.

Neither city is a place to go for the shops, but they sell different things. Rio is the place for beachwear: Brazilian swimwear, flip-flops and linen from the Ipanema and Leblon boutiques, the Sunday hippie fair on Praça General Osório, and the crowded Saara streets for cheap Carnival costumes. Cape Town is better for local design and things to take home, with ceramics and leather in Woodstock and on Bree Street, African crafts on Greenmarket Square, and wine and rooibos for the suitcase.

Your money goes further in Cape Town. Tasting menus, estate wine, car hire and fuel all cost a fraction of what visitors pay at home. The main expense is a room on the Atlantic seaboard in December and January.

Everyday costs in Rio are low too: kilo lunches, beers in a boteco and the metro are cheap, and the best things, the beaches and forest trails, cost nothing. But hotels near the sand are poor value, the smart restaurants in Leblon charge close to European prices, and room rates jump steeply around Carnival and New Year.

In Rio, live music is part of an ordinary night out. Samba and choro bands play in Lapa's old two-storey houses, rodas de samba gather in squares and bar courtyards, the samba schools rehearse in the months before Carnival, and small venues keep bossa nova going in the neighbourhoods where it began. For something formal, the gilded Theatro Municipal has opera and ballet.

Cape Town has a sound of its own in Cape jazz and one of Africa's biggest jazz festivals, and the summer Sunday concerts on the lawns at Kirstenbosch make a lovely evening. Beyond that, Artscape and the Baxter Theatre offer a couple of nights of drama, opera and dance.

Neither city has thermal baths or a bathing tradition of its own, so the difference is in the pace. Cape Town is the calmer of the two. You can spend long lunches on wine estates, swim in the False Bay tidal pools in the morning or pass a quiet afternoon in Kalk Bay, and the spas on the grander Winelands estates are good value.

In Rio, relaxing means the beach and an evening walk on the promenade, plus hotel spas and yoga on the sand, but the city around you is loud and hot. For real quiet you have to go up to Santa Teresa or out to the mountain towns inland.